KITCHEN PROJECT: Phase 1 complete!

The Project:  Two hours, two small women, a garbage bag, a recycling box;   a yellow 10x10 kitchen with really awkward narrow cupboards; a handful of rags and cleaning cloths; a staggering collection of ziploc containers and waaaay too many cooking pots. Throw in some nice new plastic boxes...and a few rolls of shelf liner! Shelf liner? It's sticky on one side. Watch it- it can totally turn on you!

My friend Lynn (she's one third of my Tiny Writers group) joined me for an afternoon of decluttering and reorganizing. It was an intimidating task but I was ready for it. We were so ready to get to work that we forgot to take the BEFORE picture.  Yeah well, there's no way we were gonna put all the junk back for a photo session...

So, here are the SLIGHTLY TIDIED UP BEFORE THE BEFORE pictures:

frightening cupboard under the sink

intimidating cupboard beside the oven

kitchen table, aka Place Where Junk Goes To Die, freed of most of its heinous clutter.  

Where did the clutter go, you ask?

On the dining room table.  And it's not staying there.  

Here's Lynn.  Isn't she cute?  

Here's me, both excited and nervous about taking my kitchen apart.


 Are you seeing the chaos in this room?  I mean, I'm generally okay with a bit of chaos. But this is ridiculous.  I have about six inches of counter space in there, covered with all this stuff. What to do with it all?  What the heck is it all?  I'm not good with decisions.  That's why a job like this is sooo much better with a buddy.  Preferably a buddy with a good sense of humour!

To get started, we tackled the worst, most visible problem: the kitchen table.  We cleared it. Then we had to find a place for all that junk. The only way to do that was to empty all the lower cupboards.  This may seem kind of bass-ackwards but we needed to get that all straightened out to get more storage space.  Soon that gaping cavern under the sink was lined with white paper and free of broken crap, extra crap and useless crap.  We'd found room for the garbage can, green bin bucket, cleaning supplies (ie big jug of white vinegar) and my Grandma's watering can.  All stuff that needs to be in easy reach.

We worked our way through the two stoopidest cupboards ever built.  We got more room by sticking a couple of stacking bins to use vertical space, and boxes to hold smaller things, making it easier to get at the big stuff lurking behind.

We ended up getting into the drawer under the oven too.  See how far-reaching this table-clutter problem was?

And the result, after a couple hours of kneeling on the floor and pitching stuff and wiping dust off things?

I have elbow room!

I feel relief.   There's still more work today, but this is a good start! A few items are going into storage in the laundry room.  I'll have to do a thrift store run to pass on some things I don't need.  And of course, why stop here?  There's still the top cupboards!  Not the top of the fridge though.   There actually is no top of the fridge.  I can't see it, and therefore it does not exist.  

All afternoon I kept walking into my kitchen and looking at everything.  It's the same, but it's different.  I like it.  I may still have a few appetite problems these days, but at least now when I remind myself that it's time to eat something, I end up in a room I feel pretty okay in.

(Thank you, Lynn!)