Homekeeping — Page 6

New Year’s Energy: Sorting out Cabinets! Yay!

January 1, 2010

Happy New Year, everyone!

We had a lovely day. It doesn’t really fit the canonical description of a “lovely day,” mind you. Except for in Remarkably Domestic Husband’s world, where sorting through things and cleaning stuff out would be a daily ritual. He loves that crap. There is something wrong with him.

Somehow, though, the thought of the new year gave me a huge energy boost this morning, so I decided to go through a few cabinets and drawers. This project snowballed, of course. The good news is that I went through every cabinet and drawer that really needed it. Other good news: now I have a few empty cabinets and drawers, and the rest of them are much more functional. Bad news? Well, I’m not sure it’s bad news, but it’s 4 pm and I’m still in my pajamas, and the organizing is all I really have to show for myself today. Truly, though, it’s kind of a lot to show.

There wasn’t anything ground-breaking in the organizing I did. Mostly I got rid of stuff I haven’t used in years (or, in some cases, ever) and that gave me enough room to make things all efficient and purty-like. Here are a few examples:

this is not at all efficient

You will notice that this is a big mess. Not only do I have to dig through to get to a tool, but the anti-skid mat thingy that I put down on the bottom of the drawer is all cattywampus. I got rid of a few unnecessary tools (my two cents on what are necessary tools in a moment), like the kiwi knife/scooper (really???), the bowl scrapers (every Christmas for several years one of these was in my stocking), and something I never used that looked like a pastry cutter but really wasn’t. Out with the old, and stay out, will ya?

After emptying the drawer, I reset the anti-skid stuff. But this time I got kinda smart about it– I attached it to the bottom of the drawer with double-sided tape. (Is that totally obvious? I’ve never done it before.) To make it easier to lay in, I only peeled the backing off the double-sided tape an end at at time, so it laid in really cleanly and wrinkle-free. Like this:

the front corners are taped, and I'm peeling the sides now to roll them in

I know, you are all thinking, “These are the sterling tips I expect on Remarkably Domestic.” I do what I can, folks.

Then, I laid in all the tools, from least used in the back to most used up front. Here’s how it looks:

is anyone wondering what on earth some of those tools are?

I do have a few things to say about my favorite kitchen tools. I appreciate these kinds of lists on other blogs, like this one over at The Kitchn and this one over at Smitten Kitchen, and I thought my own was worth posting. Mine’s a little more ecclectic.

1. Microplane graters (far left of the photo). The best for grating zest, chocolate, and of course, Parmesan cheese.

2. Cherry pitter (next to the microplanes in the middle of the drawer). I am the first to admit that I have a lot of tools that are one job deals– this cherry pitter does nothing else but pit cherries. But I am unapologetic. I heartily subscribe to Martha Stewart’s philosophy, the right tool for the right job. It makes those jobs much easier. If you have little kids like I do who have trouble getting around the pits in a cherry, this tool is miraculous. How can you deny your little one delicious cherries? I also use it, of course, when making a cherry clafouti or pie or whatevs.

3. Ginger grater (the white round thing in the center of the drawer). This is another one of those one job tools, but it makes a huge difference with ginger. If you don’t like those woody strings in the ginger, this is the tool for you. It grates the ginger, leaving the woodiness behind. Since I use ginger in both savory and sweet dishes, the grater gets used pretty often.

4. Needle-nose pliers. These are indispensable for pulling bones out of salmon fillets.

5. Garlic peeler (that blue cylinder towards the top). This one’s from Martha, but I like it. You stick the garlic inside and then roll it, and out comes skinless garlic. Sometimes I do it the Jamie Oliver way, smashing the garlic with the flat side of a big knife, but this way’s fun, too. So, not a totally necessary tool, but one that comes in handy.

Besides the drawer, I also tackled cabinets. Like this one:

most of the things in here are totally inaccessible

The bottom of this cabinet gets used the most, obviously, since it’s the laundry stuff. The other shelves are extra baking storage. But things were organized so poorly that I never wanted to take things out– even when I had to put something away. So instead of getting out the proper Tupperware and putting something away, I’d just pile it in there, promising I’d put it in the right tub at some point. Guess what? That point never came. Until today.

The first thing I did was get rid of the bread maker. It was a nice ride, Welbilt, and I loved ya for a while, but I haven’t used that maker in about 3 years. And now I feel like I’d rather make handmade loaves. Done. That freed up some space, but mostly I had to just reorganize. All the cookie cutters went into one bin, food coloring into a few others (who knew I had so much food coloring?), other baking supplies (pastry bags, sugar decorations, pastry bag tips, etc. etc.) into another. And then I organized the tins. What am I doing with all these tins? I buy them when they are cheap so that when I give cookies or some other treat as a gift, I can use them. But they were so hard to get to, I never did. Now: piece of cake.

much better

I moved the cookie decorating stuff down to the middle shelf in the hopes that it will be easier to get to and get used more frequently. Whether or not that is actually the case will remain to be seen.

So, that was my deal. All in all, a very productive way to start 2010!

Incidentally, will you say “two thousand ten” or “twenty ten”?

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Kitchen Cabinet Organization: I Wish I Had a Pantry

December 10, 2009

I love my house, and I love my kitchen, but alas, what I wouldn’t do for a pantry. I had a contractor friend we know look at our weird broom closet that sort of straddles the kitchen and laundry room– puh-leez, can we turn it into a pantry?– but there’s a weight bearing wall and yadda yadda, no deal.

So I deal with my cabinets, which frankly work just fine. I’m just envious of all those enormous walk-in pantries. Today, I got a burst of energy after a relatively large shopping trip to Trader Joe’s. This happens to me every few months, and then I clean out the refrigerator and various other spaces. Today, it was my main food cabinet. I took everything off of the top shelf (shameful secret: I only cleaned out one SHELF of one cabinet. But it’s a start.), cleaned the shelf, tossed a load of things, and realized, “Holy Crap, where did I get so much vinegar and oil????”

There were amazing things in that cabinet that I had completely forgotten I had. Some of them I tossed because I couldn’t remember where I got them and they looked, well, funky. (Does vinegar go bad? TLC tells me it does.) But even after tossing I had a plethora of oils and vinegars, and I knew I’d forget about them in about 3 hours and be pulling them out of there again in 3 months. It’s like Groundhog Day meets Top Chef. (And speaking of pop culture references, I cannot use the word plethora– EVER– without thinking of Three Amigos. ”Would you say I have a plethora of oils and vinegar??”)

What to do. I decided to make an inventory of the various delights in the cabinet. And I simply taped it to the inside of my cabinet. Low tech, yes. But it does beat pulling 20 some odd bottles out of the cabinet to see if I have champagne vinegar when I’m rushing out the door to the grocery store.

inventory and... the inventory

Inventory broken down by "oil" or "vinegar." "Soy sauce" gets its own category.

Do you have any special cabinet organization? Do you remember Three Amigos? And lastly, what should I do with raspberry champagne vinegar?

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Project: Sandbox Sifter

November 19, 2009

I could never figure out how to keep our sandbox clean. We even have a cover for it, but somehow, it still gets filled with pine needles and leaves and other random debris. It usually looks like this:

debris-filled sandbox

As I played in this filthy sandbox with my kids, I thought, “if only we had a really big version of those toy sifters. I could sift all this crap out and the sandbox would be good as new.” And then I got a bee in my bonnet, and I wouldn’t rest until I had BUILT myself a sifter.

Now, I am NOT handy. I am willing to give things a go and can often cobble something together that is workable, if not aesthetically pleasing. And that’s kinda what happened with the sifter.

I figured, how hard can it be to make a sifter? Basically, I figured I just needed a frame to which I could nail some screen. So I headed to Home Depot, where I got a 4′ x 6′ piece of pine that I had the guys there cut into 4 equal pieces (of 1.5′ each, if you are doing the math), two metal drawer pulls, some “common nails” (I love this term; it sounds so medieval), some thumbtacks, carpet nails, and a roll of screen. And I was off.

Supplies? CHECK.

First step: make the frame. The first connection is the hardest, since I didn’t have a vice or a carpentry table or any helpers other than my 3 year old. So I piled up a few bags of compost on which I leaned the end of the board I was nailing. And I ended up with this start:

the first connection

The next board was a bit easier.

not too shabby

The final board was a little trickier since I had to make sure I lined it up correctly. The key is to make sure that each board is attached on one end to the outside of another board and on the other, to the inside. I don’t know how else to explain this, but here it is.

frame complete!

The next step was attaching the screen. I recommend attaching a larger piece to be trimmed later; I tried doing it starting with the edge, and inevitably I didn’t line it up straight enough and I couldn’t get the opposite side to match. Once you lay the screen over the frame, attach it in each corner with a thumb tack, stretching the screen tightly as you do. Then you can add more thumbtacks around the frame. This part was so simple that my 3 year old helped.

attaching the screen

Who am I kidding? He did most of the work.

Then, I used the carpet tacks to fill in the rest of the outline. I used a combination of the thumbtacks and the carpet tacks because the thumbtacks covered more surface area, although they weren’t the most grippy fasteners ever, and the carpet tacks really held on but didn’t hold quite as much surface area. I know, I really thought about this when I was in the fasteners aisle at Home Depot.

After the screen was attached, I trimmed it flush with the edge of the frame, and I was almost done!

thumbtacks and carpet tacks, yay!

Now, just because I wanted to be fancy, I decided to put some handles on this puppy, to make it easier to sift. That took a little maneuvering, but I finally got it right:

Is ta da one word or two?

Impressive, yeah? It really only took me about an hour, if you count only the time I was working and not the time I was pretending to be a tiger chasing the 3 year old on his tricycle or the time I spent trying to stop the dog from going in the neighbors yard. And I spent about $10 on it at Home Depot, so I figured, hey, win win.

I’ll be inserting a photo here of the cleaned sandbox as soon as I, uh, sift it.

UPDATE! We sifted. Here’s my husband doing the honors: