When I was younger, I loved all things ornate. I dreamed of having a house full of multi-layered moldings and bric-a-brac and detail detail detail. I wanted a kitchen full of color and complexities.
But now I'm older and I actually clean things. What I desire now is the most flat, streamlined, nonfussy house ever. I want straight lines. I want flat surfaces. I want a kitchen that is white on white so it gleams when it's clean. I want flat cabinets with finger handles build into the door so there is no handle to catch grime and dust bunnies. I want everything to be easily moved so I can get under and around it.
And all of this . . . kind of shocks me. No, it really shocks me. It's such a huge change from what I always thought I would like as a kid. Then again, as I said, I didn't clean much of anything as a child. I didn't know how annoying it can be to have to use Cthulthan geometry just to get all the dirt off the refrigerator handle. Seriously. One of the demands I have for a new fridge is that it has no handle. That thing is never clean.
One of my favorite things about our kitchen involves a solution we came up with to handle our pantry storage. Well, you know, our LACK of pantry storage. We needed shelving for the cans and stuff and really had none. We were also limited on space. However, we realized that next to the fridge, we had a couple of small areas that would hold shelves used for closet organization. We found some cheap particle board ones and they work perfectly.
The shelves are painted white and have very simplistic, straight lines. Normally, each unit has three shelves. We decided to make the lower units have two shelves each, and use the extra board to make the upper units have four shelves each. This way, our smaller cans have nice places to live that work for their size.
Of course, it isn't just a nice area for storage. It's also great for organization. Each shelf holds certain items and does not hold things outside of its designated category. This not only helps to keep us from having to look for "where we put that can of beans," but it allows for easy inventory. It's helped us to keep from buying multiples of things of running out of them.
Books on a bookshelf create color and variety, just by the very nature of being books. In the same way, the cans bring color and variety to the white shelves. In kitchens, I like to have form and function be one in the same. The items of utility become the decor. They just used for practical purposes as well.
When the need rises, we take everything off the shelves and clean them. We don't have to do this very often, because the design of units keeps them from collecting much dust or other unwanted things. When we do have to clean them, the longest part of the process is getting the cans off the shelves. The actual cleaning of them is quite easy.
And for all of these reasons, I love those storage shelves. We repurposed closet organization because it had the shape and simplicity to fill our needs. The shelves are easy to handle and easy to keep clean. They allow for a lot of easily accessed storage and keep us organized. Practical, frugal, simple, clean, functional, and organized. All of the things that I adore in my house and life . . . oddly enough.
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