I want to apologize for the lack of warning before the raw chicken close-up picture in my last post. That was really inconsiderate of me. So:
Please know that if you scroll down far enough, you will see a big ‘ol jpg of uncooked meat, and depending on your monitor resolution and color settings, it could be fairly nasty. There. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Because clearly I did.
ÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀúÀú
I had another unexplainable crying fit Saturday. The weekend was going really well; it was a great morning, even a pretty awesome Friday night. I guess my hormones just decided it was time for my once-weekly pity party ::pulls out pregnancy card and places it on the table:: .
Following this mini-sobfest, I decided that our kitchen was stressing me out. Must. Organize. Everything. So, DanO and I launched Operation: Conquer Kitchen at 2:00 on Saturday. The following ensued:
I organized my spice and my baking drawers. Those are ‘before’ pictures, by the way. Sheesh. What kind of organizer do you think I am? Well. The spices are ‘before’ I put them in matching, labeled containers, but ‘after’ I dumped them all in one bag, alphabetized them, and then rated them on frequency of use (nesting much?).
Those boxes in the corner used to be my ‘pantry’. No really, we called it that. When you’re Costco shoppers, you need a place to store the other 38 boxes of whatever you bought because they won’t all fit in your food cupboard. This was that place. Then, I bought a $35 shelf from Ikea.
…which DanO decided to assemble at 7:45am Sunday, because, I mean, what else is there to do at 7:45am on a Sunday when you’re already ready for church? By 8:00 my pantry was put together and sitting in it’s home on the four-season porch.
Also, using a gift card and general frugality, we paid $70 out of pocket for a chest freezer. Shortly after realizing that freezers need grounded electrical outlets, DanO rewired the 1930s 2-pronger out on the porch so that we could actually turn on and use our steal-of-a-chest-freezer.
I organized our April projects and plans after purchasing this whiteboard calendar I’d been eying from Walmart.
I’m sorry, did I just say I’d been eying something at Walmart?
Maybe we should loosen our budget a little. Yikes.
Every last kitchen surface got a thorough wipe-down (see also: nesting) using an amazing smelling, non-toxic kitchen spray I found this weekend at HomeGoods. Doing this I learned that back splashes are actually exposed to quite a bit of splash over a 9 month period. Like, 4 really, really dusty and dirty paper-towels worth of splash. Nasty.
And finally, a picture of Pearl’s contributions to our weekend kitchen campaign:
So helpful.
So you basically turned your kitchen into your franklin covey planner? How surprising. P.S. Looks like all pantries come from Ikea – I put those shelves together a year ago, obviously in an unconcious aspiration to be as handy as Dan your handyman.
I love the new look of the blog! I have those outbursts of need to organize all the time. Last week it was the upstairs closet. This week it is my cooking magazines, again…
[...] you thought I was kidding when I said here that I alphabetized my spices, ranked them by frequency of use, and then put them into matching, [...]