Creating More Storage to the Kitchen

I found a way to create more space in my cupboards. I can't say that I "invented" any of this, but it was new to me, and I thought it up all by myself when we were at Lowe's Saturday night. So for me, this was a major project that took a lot of careful thought and processing. ;)

After moving the kids' dishes into the same cupboard as the grown-up dishes, I was really concerned about the excessive waste of space. And I didn't like the thought of having so many dishes stacked on top of each other (all the plates together, all the bowls together). It was just too much of something and didn't work for me.

I found this expandable wire rack. It just seemed perfect for stacking our plates and bowls in a more manageable way.

My dish towels and dish cloths were another concern for me. About the only good place for them has been in one of my upper cupboards. But they get all jumbled up whenever anyone digs through them. I've even been known to just "throw" clean cloths up there intead of taking the time to get a step stool and gently place the clean cloths on the top of the stack. But since hubs moved the cabinet the kitchen towels have been kept in, I thought it was high-time to get serious about how I was going to store these without creating chaos. Lowe's had copper wire baskets (the picture in the link to Lowe's does not do justice) with cute little handles on the side. They were reasonably priced, and I thought they would be really handy for storing kitchen towels and cloths. I didn't think that I'd be able to store them going cross-ways on the shelf, but lo & behold they fit, freeing up even more space to the right of them! And if I stand on my toes, I can reach up high enough to pull these down or put them up, so I don't have to worry about grabbing the step stool after all.

I found a whole lot more inspiration ideas, but I managed to hold myself back...for now. It's just too easy to try to do everything all at once, which really isn't easy because who has the time (or the money) to do that! So I keep reminding myself, "Baby steps, baby steps."