Monday, January 24, 2011

Order to Chaos

In the midst of post-Christmas clean up I always get the urge to purge.  With all the stress of recent events, bringing order to the chaos has been cathartic. 

I started in the kitchen with our pantry.  The left door of our pantry was hanging crooked and two of the hinges had completely pulled out.  With only one door left on the pantry I have been unable to use the child safety lock, which has meant that Lil' Hoot has free access to the contents.

Before
As you can see, the lower half of the pantry was barely in use.  Our bread was stored on top of the cabinet to avoid being squished.  All my baking supplies are shoved onto one small shelf so that I had to dig to find things and often had no idea what supplies I had on hand.  The art supplies were haphazardly thrown into a basket where I could never find what I needed and had to stretch just to reach it.  Not to mention the eyesore of a half doorless pantry.
After
As a temporary solution for the door I used wood glue to put the chipped wood back into place and reattach the hinges.  I spread out my baking supplies on two shelves with clear containers so I can also see what is behind the first level.  The breads and crackers moved back down to their original home on a pull out shelf.  I added a bucket on the lower left to hold root vegetables.  Lil' Hoot still rearranges the pantry from time to time but since I can now put the safety lock in place, her access is better supervised. 
I also slipped our foot stool on the lower left side so I could also make use of the upper level cabinets for storing supplies for arts and crafts.  I found that an old Velvetta container was the perfect size for storing colored pencils.  Lil' Hoot's crayon bucket and a yet-to-be covered markers bucket fit perfectly to the left of the supplies basket. 

Such simple changes that make baking, cooking and crafting more accesible and enjoyable on a daily basis!  Any tips for making it even better?  How do you organize your kitchen?

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