December tiny projects challenge: Day 3

15 December 2021

Today’s tiny project challenge involved a built-in cabinet in our extra kitchen. Extra kitchen? My husband and I live in a 1908 home that was built as a two-family house. When we bought it in 1992, we lived upstairs and rented out the downstairs apartment. Then we moved to Brooklyn, New York, from 1997 to 2001 and rented out both units. When we returned, we elected to live in the whole home but we did minimal renovations. So we have two kitchens. This was very handy when we renovated our main kitchen (which is upstairs) in 2016.

Each kitchen has a built-in cupboard. We use the extra one for overflow pantry items, as well as for cookbooks and a few dishes. In our haste to put away groceries we tended to just shove stuff in the cabinet. So I decided to show it some love today.

Here’s the before picture:

I pulled out the half-dozen drinking glasses we’d stashed in that cabinet. I’m confident I can get my husband to agree to donate them. I decided to move a few of the dishes upstairs. And I consolidated the cookbooks. That created some space on the shelves.

Then I pulled out some high-sodium packaged items that we will no longer use since Barry is now on a low-sodium diet. We currently have seven large cans of low-sodium tomatoes that needed to find a home in the cabinet, so that was very helpful. I took two bags of chips to the upstairs pantry. (I love chips.)

I had two large round boxes of old-fashioned oatmeal (one of which wouldn’t fit in the cabinet) because I eat Overnight Oats for breakfast most mornings. I keep a small container of oats upstairs and replenish it from the downstairs supply. I also have some overflow Overnight Oats ingredients in this cabinet.

I made the oatmeal situation more pleasing by decanting the oatmeal into some beautiful 1.5-liter Quattro Stagioni glass canning jars that I had purchased at the Container Store for dog food. I ended up using glass canisters for dog food instead but didn’t want to throw away these beautiful jars, so they were taking up space in the cabinet. This was a terrific solution.

It took no time to put like things together so that all pasta and tomatoes were together and baking supplies were together. On the top shelf, I tidied up the box of plastic tableware I keep there for lunch on the go.

Here’s the after picture:

(There are two items you might be curious about, so I’ll mention them. The big red thing next to the tomatoes is a silicone microwave popcorn popper that totally rocks. And those birds on the top shelf are made of sugar and my husband, who is trained as a pastry chef, made them!)

The whole project took only about a half hour. That was time well spent—it’s going to have a big impact because that cabinet is now nicer to look at and will be much less annoying to use!

Tagged with: kitchen organization, tiny projects