A New blog

I just started a new blog. I noticed I write a lot about domestic engineering and decided to make a separate blog for those types of posts to spare those friends not interested in that stuff from suffering.

I'd love for you to join me if cooking and organizing is your thing:

www.bashfulbeckythedeadlyblade.blogspot.com

Coffee Station

This pic belongs with the bottom caption, just can't figure out how to move it


bottom drawer: this is coffee stuff we don't use every day: the carafe, grinder, 2 cup maker, travel mugs, wide mouth funnel (I use to pour coffee into the small coffee canister I use with the 2 cup maker). The front row of this drawer is what the kids use when they make themselves tea: honey (in it's own liner to keep the drawer from getting sticky), tea, electric kettle
middle drawer: the basics for coffee - regular, decaf, specialty, instant, filters, special tea. I used brown shelf liner for all the coffee station drawers, though I like the Ikea gray liner much more. Also, props for the Ikea drawers! Even this middle drawer is deep enough to hold the wholesale club size coffee cans standing up

top drawer: I'm not sure what I'm going to keep in here once the coffee cups are hung on the wall! Love the spoon rest and coffee spoons I got at Ikea. They are around an inch shorter than a teaspoon, so they're easy to keep separate from the other spoons. I wanted something specifically to keep in the drawer for stirring coffee, and a spoon rest to keep with them. I also have our everyday medicines in the drawer - stuff we want easy access to: daily meds (days of the week dispenser), multi vits and C (clear top containers), the pestle for crunching up the dog's daily med (I know, I know, but she's a member of the family and it's something we use every day), plus Motrin and aspirin and prescriptions to refill the daily med dispensers.

These pics may be a little misleading because I am posting this before the prep sink is in and the countertop is just the tile laid in place. The wall hanging will go above the coffee pot, and above the prep sink will be all my favorite coffee mugs hung as usable art on black hooks.

The spice drawer

The Obsession will now begin

Ok, I'll admit it....I might have an obsession with organizing like other people do with couponing, French cooking or computers. I can't help it. I have a quest, an internal drive to put things in order. I sat and daydreamed with a notepad about what would be the best place to put each item in my kitchen for optimal ease of use and storage. I made charts. I grouped like items together. I demoted less used items to remote storage. I spent a LOT of time arranging adjustable drawer dividers.

Why?

The gritty truth revealed:

I am a Messy.

I will never be one of those urban chefs with open shelves of ingredients and dishes. No Can Do. If there is too much stuff on the counter I get overwhelmed, demotivated, even...no, not ME...grumpy. I even feel that way after I've cooked dinner. I want to avoid the kitchen, hide from the piles of dishes and ingredients, secretly hoping that someone else will clean it up for me. They don't.

but I am a reformed Messy.

I know the tricks. Put ingredients away in stages (all the fridge stuff, all the pantry stuff) as I'm cooking. Just start the dishes and the peace will come as each dish is put away and order begins to return item by item. Don't fool yourself into thinking that washing them and leaving them in the drainer will work. Then the drainer becomes an area to avoid and the whole thing starts again.

So I make a choice.....be chronically messy or foster the obsession with organization. It's a little tiring because I can never let up without disaster lurking around the corner, but I lived for a long time as a Messy (just ask Nancy about my room on Woodcrest Ave.) and I don't like the feeling. Even now there's not much middle ground for me. Things look really good or really bad, and there's only a couple hours of middle ground for me to reign it back in or suffer the consequences.

Hmmm....I wanted this to be funny but it sounds like a confession!

Oh well! Now to start the fun :) Here's a pic of the spice drawer, located to the left of the cooktop (not yet installed). It took a lot of willpower to leave any of the spices in their original jars and not to run out and get stainless steel measuring spoons. I also have my tiny glass bowls and measuring spoons in this drawer so that Dave can measure spices for me - I am training him as my sous chef :)

Dang! The pic won't post. I'll add it as another post