Making Space and Sharing Space

An occupational hazard of letting the Big Kids use your kitchen is that on the (rare) occasions when they do clean up and put things away, things are not necessarily put away where you usually keep them.

Last night I practically tore this drawer apart looking for the meat fork.

I never did find it.  This drawer was getting so bad that it wasn't always easy to open or close.  Something had to give.

So I dumped the contents of the entire drawer on my kitchen table, cleaned out the inside of the drawer and the baskets, and started fresh.

I found a few items that were duplicates (and who needs two "push-me-pull-yous" for oven racks?) so I put those aside for Big Brother to take to his college apartment in the fall.

Some other items, like the pancake turner, are used so frequently around here (grilled cheese and tomato, anyone?) that I didn't want them back in the drawer.  But they didn't fit in the oatmeal canister that I use for a utensil crock.

Then I remembered the coffee can from Cafe du Monde that I'd saved.  It brings back memories of my trip to Louisiana during my own college days, when I was my school's delegate to a campus ministry event.  I sanded down the open end with some coarse-grit sandpaper, cleaned the can, and tossed some ladles and pancake turners in there, as well as a few other things.

The kids will be able to find things easily, and they might even put them away in the right place when they clean up.

I have coffee-can lids on the bottom of both of those cans to prevent rust.

I'm still working on the arrangement of the rest of the drawer, but at least it's cleared out enough now that it can be opened and closed without things getting stuck.

Like my fancy paper-tower-tube holder for my cooking tongs?  Yes, it looks junky, but it takes a lot of abuse.  Eventually I will use up the last paper towel on the current roll, and then I'll have a whole new holder.

It's a little change, but it should make a big difference in a kitchen that is no longer a one-mom operation.

Now the issues involved in sharing a 10 x 10 kitchen with 3 kids (2 of whom are taller than me) and 1 husband are a different story.  We trip over each other a lot.  It's a traffic nightmare, but that's a project for another day.