"I think I can . . ."
Our new kitchen is bigger than our old one,
but we have less cabinet space and our pantry is smaller.
Stuff It
So I read a hundred blogs, magazines and books on kitchen storage ideas
to prepare for the big put-away.
Indispensable IKEA Lazy Susans: $7.00
With lazy susans from IKEA, and spice stackers from Walmart, I hit the shelves about 11 p.m. the night after we moved in. The lazy susans were great, but I could only fit one on a shelf, and there was wasted space above the cans. I unloaded the pantry and started again from scratch at midnight.
The second round worked better using tiered stands on the shelves, but there was still stuff out that needed to be stuffed in. In my pile I found a hanging wire shelf that hooked onto the shelf above it, but I couldn't reach it unless I put it low, which would hinder access to the cans. If I didn't redo it now, I'd never do it, so I unloaded the pantry again and started over at 1:00 am.
An hour later I was sitting on a stool, staring at my cans. They still didn't look quite right. So I rearranged them by category (soup, fruit, veg) and then again by height. Dee wandered down about 2:30 to see what I was doing. By then my head was swimming with obsessive thoughts of canned goods. I invited him to view my efforts.
"Have you been Sleeping With the Enemy?" he asked, referring to Julia Robert's freaky soup-can controlling husband in the movie. "Can you remember him?" "I can," I mumbled and stumbled off to bed.
I must have been obsessing even in my sleep, worrying that my cans weren't as cute as they could be. I dreamed I sewed them all little clothes.
"That's weird."
