Makeover Monday – Kitchen Cabinets

As I mentioned last week, I did some work in the kitchen recently. 

We purchased our house halfway through construction, so we I was able to make a lot of design decisions.  The kitchen was my primary area of concern, and one of the things I changed was eliminating the dust-collecting space on top in favor of extending our cabinets to the ceiling.  It’s a great use of otherwise wasted space and it makes the ceilings look higher.

However, it’s also a pain in the tush to access.  Meaning whatever I put up there, I forget about.  This allows a saver like me to hang on to my mom’s old punch bowl (used once in the 10+ years I’ve had it), my Grama’s baked bean crock (never used) and plastic luau dishes that I swear I’ve never even seen before.  Someone else must have put them there.

It was time to purge.

I was able to clear out 3 large boxes of junk really great stuff to donate to Goodwill, and I cleaned out all of the cabinets in the process.  I also decided to re-arrange, thanks to this cool article in the February issue of Family Fun.  The idea of putting the dishes in the bottom cabinets intrigued me, so we’re giving it a trial run.

Here is a lower corner cabinet before:

And after the switch to kid-friendly dishes:

(I’m using storage containers from the dollar store to hold lids, cups, straws, etc.  I didn’t buy enough, hence the mis-matched collection.  Hoping to find a couple more of the green baskets when I go back.)

The upper cabinet that used to house the kids’ dishes now holds canned goods:

The upper corner cabinet that used to hold canned goods now holds baking dishes and grown-up dishes:

Newly organized medicine cabinet:

Another lower corner cabinet, before (I know, I know – a shameful disaster.  It’s actually birthday party supplies though, not the norm):

That cabinet now holds all of the crockpots and mixing bowls, lids, etc, and the pans were relocated to an upper cabinet:

I should have taken before and after pictures of all the cabinets, to show how much I purged and organized, but I was mainly focused on the non-traditional relocation of stuff.  It’s only been a couple of weeks, but so far I’m really liking this setup.  It’s much easier for the girls to help unload the dishwasher now, and they are able to set the table themselves too.

The only thing I didn’t organize is the roll-out pantry.  I’d love to have a separate room pantry, but alas mine has roll-out shelves instead.  I thought I would love this but as it turns out, not so much.  Lesson learned – when designing a kitchen, don’t assume there is a standard size for anything.  My shelves are fixed, and they are not tall enough to allow cereal boxes to stand up.  A constant source of frustration for me.

So there it is, my kitchen re-do.  It’s nothing fancy really, but it’s turned out to be a more functional setup with 3 little kids, and as Martha would say, that is a very good thing!

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