M. Suzanne Terry

This week, I tackle the kitchen.

Confession – I don’t love my kitchen.  It’s so small, and there’s not quite room enough for all my things.  But Joy the Baker can work in a tiny kitchen, so I know that usefulness is possible.  It’s so much work.  There is a reason that my weekly maintenance plan includes daily kitchen time.  So.  Much.  Work.

This week is about deep cleaning (I might actually move the stove out and clean, because it is probably super funky behind there) and making it more user-friendly.

First, I want to give you an idea of what we’re working with.  My kitchen is a galley kitchen.  There is actually an impressive amount of cabinet space for how short this particular galley is.

This is the stove side of the kitchen.  I would like to pretend that this is a particularly messy day.  I would like to blame The Great Egg Fiasco for this picture(you know what one of the messiest things in the world just might be?  When you crack what you think is a hard boiled egg and it turns out to be soft boiled, and this violates your expectations so of course egg yolk goes everywhere.  Vegans, 1.  Ovo-folk, 0.).  The truth is that this is better than my kitchen usually looks.  Hidden in that corner is my toaster oven, which I might use more often than my actual oven.  His name is Theodore.

This is what the inside of that cabinet looks like.  There are usually bowls on the left side on the second shelf, but we just had pasta the night before, so all the bowls were dirty when this picture was taken. On account-a I’m short as hell, I can reach the first shelf and almost to the back of the second if I stretch or I’m wearing heels (maybe Donna Reed was actually onto something?).  This is why the step stool pictured above stays in a  perpetual state of readiness.

The cabinet below the counter is where all my cookware goes.

This is the coffee nook.  It has potential, but it seems to be lacking something.  The cabinet above it has more coffee mugs than any one person should ever own.  I might weed a few out.  Might.  I make no promises.  I have attachment.

The cabinet below holds mixing bowls and miscellaneous appliances, such as the popcorn air popper, casserole dishes, larger measuring cups, etc.

This is the sink side of the kitchen.  This is not the most interesting picture I could have taken, but I decided that you didn’t need to see a sink full of dirty bowls.  The refrigerator is bad enough.  All those scraps of paper are recipes that I tacked up there for ease of use but never took down. I did not take a picture of the inside of the fridge, because you might cry.  It’s so bad.  I kind of want to cry, just thinking about it.

This is the shelf space above the sink and what passes for a pantry in my kitchen.  It stays fairly well organized but there’s clearly something weird happening on the bottom left. The lower cabinet on this side (not pictured) holds baking stuffs – assorted flours, sugar, baking soda, etc.

And finally…

This is my kitchen overflow area, because I have too many things to fit in the microscopic kitchen. I have re-purposed the chest of drawers/armoire thing because I have more kitchenware than clothes.  I dream of the day when I have a decent-sized kitchen (and more room in the bedroom or closet) again and can use this piece of furniture for important things like shoes.

So that’s the situation.

Here’s what I want to do about it:

1. Switch the cabinets.

• Current plate and glass cabinet – most of the pantry, including spices and baking  supplies.  The rest of the pantry items (such as unopened flours, sugars, excess canned goods) will go in the white cabinet under the microwave, and some of the more aesthetically pleasing items (such as jars of beans, popcorn, etc.) will go on the black shelf behind the microwave.
• Current pantry – plates and glasses or serving pieces
• Armoire – plates and glasses or serving pieces
• Current baking cabinet – baking apparati (stoneware, pie plates, tart pans, etc.) and food storage items.
• Coffee nook upper cabinet – still with mugs but hopefully clearing out enough space to hold the tea and packaged coffee stash.
• Staying the same but maybe getting a cleaning out – lower cabinets under the coffee nook and Theodore and all the drawers.

2.  CLEAN.  Leave no inch unwashed.  This applies doubly to the refrigerator (which is currently so gross that it might actually require a double cleaning).

3. Get rid of things that I don’t really use and don’t really want. I expect that this will be a big pile.  I expect that this will be exciting and that the telling of it will involve many exclamation points.

That’s the plan this week.  Tune in next weekend for the exciting recap!