My new “working” kitchen

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like change.  I’m not one of those women who’s constantly moving furniture, redecorating, I get things the way I like them and I leave them, and the changes I do make are usually made with baby steps.

Last year I blogged about my pantry redo and it’s been great.  I’ve managed to keep the organization, but my organized bins were stuffed so full that I still didn’t realize exactly what I had.  And now that I’ve acquired more Ball Jars, I’ve been putting a few things, like coconut, chocolate chips, marshmallows and nuts into jars, but I had to stop because I had no room left.

I know you’re rolling your eyes, thinking “oh-oh, here she goes again with those damn jars” and you’re right, but it’s been such a life changing event for me.

Hubby has been telling me for months years to redo my two glass front cabinets in the kitchen.  When we moved here nine years ago, I filled them with blue willow dishes, I have indirect lighting in them, and it’s so pretty, but if I’m honest with you, I’ve never used those dishes once in all these years and I rarely turn on the lighting.  I have the bottom of my dining room hutch filled with blue willow, these were just for display.

It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve had any appliances sitting on my counter except for my red Kitchenaid mixer, oh and that pricey DualIt toaster like Queen Elizabeth has that’s a piece of crap.  My kitchen was always decorated to the hilt with pretty bottles and pieces of pottery, and it was totally non-functional.  The kids would throw a fit when they visited because there was never enough room to cook.  I finally got smart and got rid of all that stuff and put out the small appliances and it’s made my life so much simpler.

So, this morning, I took a deep breath and had LC take every single one of those dishes out of the cabinets, and then I started a sealing frenzy.  I took things out of the pantry, sealed them in my Ball jars, and started filling my cupboards, three jars deep with pasta, grains, cereal, beans, rice, croutons, etc.  This one is finished, the other one I’m still working on.  I only have two shelves with jars because I can’t reach the top shelf, so I put pieces from mother’s kitchen on the top shelf, her mother’s old coffee grinder, a salt crock and her butter mold.  Now when I open the cabinet I see her things and smile, and I never smiled when I looked at all of those blue dishes, actually I never opened the cabinets at all.

And the pantry?  It looks positively bare, well not really, but it is a lot more accessible now.  Oh, I’m getting so smart in my old(er) age, who woulda thunk it???