Our new kitchen is one of the most fun rooms in the house. The cabinets are spacious and creaky, the ceilings are ten feet tall, and we recently discovered several layers worth of wallpaper & flooring to be explored when the time comes to decorate. We moved in with several boxes’ worth of drawer stuff only to realize there are no kitchen drawers. Chris spent an afternoon setting up the room to his liking (a battle I forfeited years ago), and boy was I impressed with the result! Here’s how my handsome handyman & I made it work:
PURGE THE JUNK. Seriously, I cannot emphasize this enough! I usually get a bit too eager with this and frustrate the rest of my family, but the kitchen junk drawer is a safe place to exercise your spring cleaning muscles. Isn’t it amazing, all of the stuff we keep around that we don’t need? I’ve got a few boxes in the dining room still to be unpacked, and I’m thinking of tossing them entirely if I don’t miss anything in a few weeks.
CREATE THE SPACE. Once we unpacked and arranged everything, we removed an entire corner unit of cabinets with a dishwasher. The fridge now resides in its place, on the opposite side of the kitchen. It opens the place up significantly, and we figure we won’t miss the space we don’t have. So far, the only thing I miss is the dishwasher. We’ll probably add one in someday.
EMBRACE THE CLUTTER. Wait, what? Not like that. But I was super impressed with the way Chris fit all of our dishes into one cabinet, a spread that used to fill two or three cabinets at our old house. As you can see in the photo above, he mounted utensils on walls and hung cups from the shelves. He warned me it’d take some getting used to, but so far I’m enjoying it!
A substantial remodel is in our future, for sure. I’d like a new sink and counter tops, as well as an island or some sort of breakfast table for quick meals. Until then, we’ll keep chugging along with what we’ve got. Got any kitchen tips for our new space? Feel free to share! Cheers.
11 Comments
An organized husband?! Girl, that’s priceless! I love these little peeks into your beautiful home!
SELECTIVELY organized, like most everyone else in the world ;)
I agree, I love the peek into your new farmhouse! I like what you’ve done with the silverware – I need to do something like that because we also have a strange set up in our kitchen.
I would definitely look into a portable dishwasher! My husband and I have had one in our last 2 apartments. We found it on Craigs List for about $100. It’s portable, compact, and very easy to use.
One of my girlfriends has one! The idea is so cool. We just wanted a lot of space to start out, but we’ll probably get one soon.
we only have 1 cabinet in our apartment, and it’s taking some serious creative organizing to make it functional. we hang our pots & pans on the wall, our mugs on a pegboard, and only keep 4 of everything in the cabinets. the rest are in our large pantry. :)
Mugs on a pegboard?! Love it.
OH how lovely! Hmm ideas or suggestions? Nothing here… I think your sweet hubby did a great job organizing… and yes I am definitely pinning this for future reference, like for the place in NY. (if and when we ever get to work on it. but thats another story for another day. just have to keep prayin… one of the reasons i’m not blogging currently…)
Have a great day!
Thank you for inspiring me!! I’m going to go organize my farm kitchen! I’ve been wasting space and just not caring but it needs to be fixed! Thank you!!
Haha, you’re welcome! You can thank my husband.
That looks great!