Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Kitchen Tour Continued

Yesterday, I showed you all the kitchen cabinets and the island. Today I will show you what I did with my freezer and how I organized the drawers in the china cabinet. There are not as many pictures, so I can show you the before and after. Hope you are not bored already.

My freezer was like most people's, everything piled up and something always got stuck in the back and forgotten for a while. Not any more. I was inspired by Biggie, and decided to use plastic baskets to help me organize everything. I took out all the contents, sorted and grouped them, and put each group in its own basket. The right basket on the top shelf holds all the frozen dumplings, popcorn shrimp, chicken breast strips, all ready for cooking or baking. The one to its left holds all frozen vegetable, corn, green bean, etc. The basket on the bottom shelf holds all raw meat, chicken, fish and shrimp. And obviously icecream and frozen pizza occupied the rest of the space. Still need to label the baskets though. Inside each basket, you can pile things up pretty high without worrying some small ones falling into other basket/group. And when you want to look for something you can take the entire basket out and really dig in without keeping the freezer door open for a long time.
Still don't really know what to put on the freezer door though. The only stuffs on there are those ice packs. Any suggestion?
And here are some before and after pictures of the drawers in my china cabinet. Same concept here, some small baskets or containers divided each drawer into sections, and everything in its own group and in clear view. This first drawer was actually like a junk drawer before. This second drawer didn't need any help. I keep two sets of placemats in there, and not very messy.The third drawer holds all my napkins and aprons. I used to stack them vertically, which looked fine, but when I try to look for something, I have to dig through a pile, and you know what happens if you pull something from the bottom of the pile, everything else got flipped, and I sometimes have to fold them again. But recently, I found a better way. Tried this method in our dresser, and DH is no longer making big messes in his undershirt drawer. I stack items horizontally. This way, you can see all the color and design at once, and nothing else will be disturbed when you pull one from the back. I like it!
The bottom drawer holds all my candles and matches, and some candle holders. I didn't know candle wax can stain wood. But now, all the candles are stored in a plastic box, no more rolling around and no more wax stain.

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