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!

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This week, I thought for sure that my CD collection was going to be the death of me.

There it is, hiding behind pictures in those orange boxes and in the nice, sleek black boxes.  It looks so small and innocent.

But oh, the humanity!

First, it took two hours – two! – just to alphabetize them.  I sat on my hard floor for two and a half episodes of Buffy. When I got up, my knee did that old-woman crack thing.  I’m pretty sure that’s why my knee was puffy and numb for the next few days.

Then my puffy knee and I went traipsing all about Denton looking for three more boxes to house the CD collection and give it some room to grow.  Easy, right?  No big deal.  Just go to the store and get boxes.

*blinks*

An epic quest featuring Target, Anna’s Linens, every thrift store in town, every dollar store and variations thereof in town, Tuesday Morning, Hobby Lobby, Big Lots, and Bed, Bath, and Beyond ended in failure.  Yes, even Hobby Lobby – the land of ten thousand boxes – was a disappointment. Every box that was short enough was too wide for the shelf.  Every box that was thin enough was too short for the shelf. The one box  – ONE! – that I found that fit my size parameters was made of wood, had a weird glass top that would have made placing anything on top of it impossible, and cost $30.  No, thank you. Apparently, people don’t like to put CDs in boxes and cover them with a lid, because no store in town sells such a thing.  To me, covering them up with a lid seems like the whole point of putting them in a box to begin with, but I am clearly in the minority.

This quest took three and a half hours.  Puffy knee was not amused.

I came home and found exactly what I needed on Amazon.  At that moment, I didn’t care about Amazon allegedly ruining the publishing industry (I tried to find an article to share with you just now that explains what I mean by that, but I’m just too tired from organizing all those damn CDs to deal with other people’s rants.  I encourage you to Google it, though. And do try to shop locally.  /public service announcement). I immediately ordered three of those bad boys.  I ordered them Friday evening, and I received them today.  It took two minutes, and it saved me from having to take a trip to IKEA (where I bought the orange ones), a trip which would have inevitably happened during rush hour or – worse – on a Saturday, after which I cannot promise that I would not have committed a terrible crime if said trip ended up being fruitless, too.  Amazon saves lives, y’all.

Trying to organize CDs took up almost all the time I had for the entryway this week.  Trying to organize CDs is the reason that I did not get the following things done:

• Organizing inbox/outbox
• Putting up pictures by the mirror
• Fixing the door/arranging a time to have door fixed
• Finding a non-trashy way to block the breeze where the sad door falls short
• Washing the carpet dots
• Mounting the coat rack
• Decluttering the under-table area
• Buying an cabinet for bar supplies
• Deep-cleaning the floorboards and moving furniture to vacuum under/behind it

I’m going to try to incorporate some of these tasks in the weeks ahead if I finish those weeks early.  So I am not giving up on those tasks.

But let’s not focus on that.  Let’s focus on what I DID get done:

• Took out the trash instead of piling it by the door
• Put the crock pot up where it belongs
• Moved the random rod from the corner by the door and move the mirrored name thing from the corner between the entry table and the shelf

• Cleared off the entryway table a little.  Took things back to the library.
• Reorganized the shelf, which included putting all the DVDs and videos in the cabinet under the television, finding a shelf to make the espresso cup display multi-level (and super cute), adding fresh flowers and the random jars of wine corks I have hanging around, moving some of the things from the writing nook shelf so that there’s more room for books there…
• AND I ORGANIZED THE CD COLLECTION.

All in all, it was a somewhat successful (albeit frustrating) week.

Tomorrow will bring the introductory post for the kitchen.  Lord, have mercy.

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This week, in addition to the cooking habit (which I will update tomorrow) and the cleaning habit (which is working far better than I ever imagined it would – YAY!), I will be focusing my deep cleaning and organizing mojo on the entryway.  When I was planning the schedule, I thought, “Oh, the entryway would be the perfect room to work on during my short week.  It doesn’t have a lot of work that needs to be done on it.” When I was taking the before pictures on Saturday, I thought, “I feel cheat-y – this looks pretty good, on account-a I just had people over this morning.”

Then I looked at the pictures again a minute ago, and I do not feel cheat-y anymore.  Even in its relatively-put-to-place state, this area needs a lot of work. This post might get long.

For the purposes of this project, I am considering the entryway to be the door area, the mail table and the shelves beside it, the dining table, and the little area where the table goes when the Christmas tree is up.

First – the shelves –

The original purpose:

• to hold movies and CDs
• to hold the clock/radio/CD player
• to display adorable coffee/tea/serving pieces that don’t fit in the kitchen

What I want to change:

• I hate the CDs and movies out on display.  I’m going to move the movies to the TV cabinet (where, according to logic, they should be anyway).  I am also going to scour thrift stores for small CD cases and use the sleeves to alphabetize my CDs in the orange boxes (hidden behind the coffee plaques) so I can get rid of all the hideous jewel cases. I might also have to buy more boxes.
• I want to find a little shelf to double up and consolidate the espresso cups on one shelf.
• As the clock radio is my only CD player in the house, it gets to stay, but I’m moving some of the coffee plaques I have elsewhere in the house to hide it.
• Main goal – create a little more shelf space for various other items taking up space around the apartment so that I have more room for things that don’t fit there.

Next, the entryway table/main area:

 Feel free to bask in the gorgeousness of this table.  I’ll wait.

The original purpose of this area:

• To organize all the things I tend to drop when I walk in – keys, umbrella (in the orange pail by the door), mail, etc.
• To store bar glasses (inside the table) and wine (the sadly empty swirly thing in the corner)
• To sort mail so that it doesn’t become a monster that eats my house

What I want to change:

• I want to distinguish between inbox and outbox in the mail file.
• I want to put up some small pictures that I had in my room when I was a little girl in the blank space beside the mirror to un-blah that white space.

The doorway:

 And a close-up:

Instead of original purpose (as it is evident that I didn’t actually have one), I am going to tell you what’s going on here:

• Towels around the door work as a buffer to keep out hot or cold air (whichever one I’m trying to combat, according to the season), insects, and all the smoke from the neighbors who don’t seem to understand that smoke does not recognize a closed door as something designed to keep it out and thus will just seep right in, particularly when one is smoking directly in front of said door, directly below said door, or really, anywhere within 10 feet of said door. Super-smeller problems.
• A sad door in a shoddily crafted building next to a site that was under construction (read: shaky ground) for a year and a half.  The door does not really fit the door frame, so the bottom latch and lock only work sporadically (better in the summer than in the winter, for some reason).  When people come in to fix things, I need them to lock the deadbolt when they leave in order to insure that my house stays locked, so I leave them a helpful reminder.
• Orange dot carpets.  Super cute, but they need to be washed often more often than they get washed.
• That box is just straight up trash.
• Crock pot was used, and that’s where the most readily available plug in the house was.  Then it was washed…and it stayed there.

What I want to change:

• All.  The.  Things.
• Ultimately, fix the door.  I can fix the deadbolt latch easily enough, but I need to call in the apartment maintenance crew to fix the huge gap under the door. This might not happen by the end of the week, however, because although they have a key and have every right to enter the apartment when I’m not there, they seem to want me to be there when they are working on something, and because I work full-time during the day, this significantly limits our time frame – hence, the problem still being a problem.
• Until the door is fixed – find a less tacky way to block the breeze.  I have a surplus of towels, and I could probably fashion a prettier solution and then affix it with velcro so that it will stay even when the door is closed from the outside but can also be easily removed and washed.  That’s my current plan.  This will either be a great idea or an amusing story.
• Wash the orange dots and spread them out.
• Quit being lazy and take trash out when needed instead of piling it by the door.
• Move crock pot back to its home.
• Put up Find and mount the coat rack I have on the wall opposite the door.
• Find something to do with that rod that’s just hanging out in the corner.

The dining table:

The original purpose of the area:

• Place to eat (or serve, when hosting gatherings larger than two)
• Where the Christmas tree goes when ’tis the season

What I want to change:

• Not much – I like the placement.  Maybe add fresh flowers to the table.
• This area tends to draw clutter (observe the unopened Pampered Chef box under the table). Stop that.
• You can’t see it, but behind the curtain are small pots of dirt with dead herbs in them.  This window gets amazing light and will serve as a great herb windowsill when I decide I want to do that. I want to start collecting pots that fit there.

And finally, the space where the table goes during Christmas:

It’s a small space, but I promise, the table fits.

What I want to change:

• Ultimately, move blue chair to bedroom where it belongs.
• Get a small (read: something that would fit under dining table, as it will have to for about a month out of the year) cabinet to store liquor and cocktail paraphernalia.

Today, tomorrow, and Friday are thrift days.  I will be on the lookout for the cabinet, mini-shelves, velcro, and CD books/sleeves.

Whew.  Tall order for a short week.  It might not all happen, but I hope to make great strides.

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Budgeting.

Ugh.

I hate budgeting.

But it must be done.

I will say from the top that I don’t need anything else in the apartment.  I do not need anything to complete this project.  In fact, I could get rid of a whole lot of things and still have everything I need to make the apartment clean and organized.

I could just wash my hands of this whole budgeting issue by making “buy nothing” one of the rules. The only problem is that, having met me, I know that I would break this rule, and without guidelines, I would break it hard, because I really love buying things.

I won’t know everything I want for each space until I am spending the week focusing on it, but here’s a small dose of what I have been pondering:

Entryway (includes all the odd space between the door and the living area):

• Divider shelf to make a stacked display of the espresso cups
• Small cabinet for liquor storage/bar paraphernalia (hello, garage sales, because I am not paying retail)
• Books for CDs so I can get rid of all those hideous jewel cases

Living room and writing nook:

• Sheets, inexpensive fabric – something to make curtains out of that 1) is not sheer and 3) matches or can be dyed to match (ish – doesn’t have to be exact)
• Possibly dye

Kitchen:

• Storage containers – leaning toward mason jars for most things but will need larger ones for multiple flours
• Small shelves to maximize space in all the cabinets
• Wooden slats to fix bottom drawer of chest of drawers and perhaps make slats for bakeware
• Barring the ability to find inexpensive shelving, spice jars that will stack
• Add to my Simple Additions collection (Pampered Chef plates, bowls, etc. – also, I’m a consultant, so if you see something you like, I can hook you up. /shameless plug)

Bedroom:

• Under-the-bed storage
• Storage chest for end of bed
• Material to make curtains (or just buying curtains) for east window
• Materials to make headboard

Bathroom:

• Silver accessories – soap dispenser, trash can, etc.
• Plum linens – six bath towels, two hand towels, shower curtain, bath mat(s)

That’s a long list already for a home that doesn’t really need anything.

This week, I am going to start pricing things and scouring garage sales and thrift stores.  Because here’s the kicker – I’m going to give myself a $300 limit.  For the whole summer.  And I’m anxious about even setting aside that much, because I really do not need anything at all.

I can buy almost everything secondhand on my list or make it myself.  I imagine the bulk of the money will be spent on the bathroom (because secondhand towels give me the icks), so I’m saving $150 for it (I have some coupons). That means that the other four areas have to average $35 apiece, with a $10 cushion.  I will have to be careful.  Because I have four huge windows in the living room/writing nook, and finding curtains for all four that either match or at least fit together in an artsy but not college-student-living-on-ramen kind of way for less than $35 is going to take a miracle (or a really fantastic estate sale).

When it comes to spending money on my apartment this summer, I will remember two things:

1. I will not consider the week a failure if I can’t find items that fit into my budget by the end of the week that the room is supposed to be “done.”  I will remember that the whole point of this project is that making a home is an on-going, ever-changing, organic process.  It is unreasonable to expect that it will be My Ultimate Living Environment by the end of the summer.
2. Even though the work is going to be divided into areas, the shopping doesn’t have to be.  If I find inexpensive storage or great towels this week, I’m going to go ahead and buy them.  Particularly if they are on sale.

Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are going to be thrift afternoons, but I reserve the right to shop whenever I feel like it.  Also, garage sales happen on Saturdays, so that’s when I’ll be doing that.  I will also be scouring Denton’s Freecycle list more carefully (meaning, I’ll actually read the email instead of saying, “Ack! No!  No more stuff!” and deleting it without opening it).  And SCRAP just became my favorite store of the summer, because the next two Fridays are fabric sales, and I might find jars there that will serve my spice storage needs. I am actively planning to make out like a bandit.

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