Monday, January 22, 2018

Kitchen Anniversary Clean OUT!

Last year we did an entire kitchen gut and remodel. You can follow the story on the blog, starting here, Whole House Remodel: Kitchen--Finally!

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We are in our late 60's and we did the entire thing ourselves....with help from friends and family. We assembled and planned an IKEA kitchen. It was a dream kitchen designed for big family meals, canning, baking, and a love for crazy amounts of vintage stuff. 

When we moved into the kitchen after four months of construction---ALMOST---everything I could possible want to use fit in all the planned storage. We decided to keep everything that fit, and purge those items not used after a year.

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Well, it's purge time. I'm not an organized person by nature, so along with a cleaning program, I began on the drawers last week. The section above had been designated everyday dishes and casual entertaining a year ago. 

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Drawer 1 is the everyday silverware and casual serving ware. We entertain family a lot. Usually under 12 people. I cleaned this out reorganized a tiny bit. I've used dividers in this drawer and don't regret this at all. The drawer basically stayed organized for the whole year. (I did pull a lot of pushpins, screws, nails, toothpicks and some paper bits out of here, though)

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Drawer 2 Before----I use paper plates and plastic plates as buffers. The bowls and small plates all stack very well, so there's no shifting to speak of.

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After cleaning and re-stacking the drawer, I have space in front, perfect for some bags of napkins, I use for quick use if someone pops in for a cup of coffee or desert. My casual dishes are mixed blue and white, and a few red, vintage as well as new. I have a stack of green anchor hocking bowls, I wish I could find more of.

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These paper napkins were found here and there in the kitchen, so I organized them and used them for the front space of my Drawer 2.

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This works, and I will continue to use the paper plate dividers, until I come up with a better (redo) solution. Purchased dividers would be expensive and wouldn't be the correct sizes anyway.


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Drawer 3 was filled with casual serving pieces, bowls, and my Chopper/mixer case (I use that a lot, 

right above on the counter). This had lots of odds and ends stuck in there---that didn't belong. 

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No. 3 empty--this is a huge drawer, I have one IKEA divider holding everything.


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While the drawers are being cleaned, I mineral oiled all the teak handles on my mid-century Scandinavian serving pieces and some of my wood bowls. These get a work-out all year long serving the extended family. They are unbreakable so no one has to worry about breaking anything. Formal dining is lovely for holidays, but for a Sunday cookout not so much.


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Drawer 3 completed: I alternated glass against plastic/metal/or wood. Rearranged with the odd pieces pulled out and there is lots of room and it's all easily accessed by the drawers.


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Surprisingly, I have used everything in this drawer way more than once this year. Some things weekly.

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This vintage platter---I'm moving to the living room buffet housing the formal dinnerware. I had pulled it out for the holidays before we put up the Christmas tree, as it was hard to get into the buffet with all the holiday decor surrounding it.


I started next on the island which has two cabinets of 3-30" wide drawers.

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This is my cleaned top drawer in what I called the baking cabinet. Very little left this drawer and very little had to be moved. Zoning drawers is the best way to stay neat. YES, I use everything here often. We do 'family' (sometimes 4 family) baking or cookies, pies, pizzas, and canned applesauce.

The box on the left is my silicone pastry pad. I have mixed and matched dividers in here. The cup of batteries are for my scale and auto-mixer for pot stirring, which I don't leave in the appliances.

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Drawer 5 is the middle drawer and has mixing bowls, glass and plastic measuring bowls, my blender stick, battery pot-stirrer, rolling pin, caulk gun cake decorator, two antique sifters, and all the tips for cake decorating, corn syrup and two containers of shortening. I have thought of dividers for this, but after using one for awhile I pulled it out to utilize all the space.



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This is the purged stuff from the 5 drawers---well, the napkins were reorganized, the plastic serving pieces/bowls actually belong on the back porch cabinet. The rest will be dealt with or filed. 
Not too bad for an unorganized person for a whole year.



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NOW---BEFORE--Drawer 6 with baking supplies, well, it's a disaster. Basically, I bought too much stuff to do at Christmas and then it didn't get it done...sigh. So--I have to tackle this which has to be organized---in a better fashion--for the next post, or.... 
maybe AFTER I bake Valentine's goodies!


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Thank you 
Sandi






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