Hi friends! I hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend! I sure did. It was productive and relaxing AND I took a NAP! Yes I said it, I took a nap and it was incredible and I feel like a totally new person. I haven't napped in SO LONG!! Like years... It was a short nap, but it was a nap. Ok enough about napping, let's get to organizing those little kitchens!
As you can see, my kitchen is fairly small. Not the smallest kitchen I've seen, but small. It's got good square footage but very little cabinets and counter surface. I could definitely use more cabinet space and counter space but I've learned to live with it. If you're new here, we moved from California to Missouri after my husband got out of the Marine Corps from a seven closet new house to a 3 very small closet old farmhouse. It's taken some adjusting and getting rid of things and dealing with the quirks of old homes but I'm loving the simplicity of having less stuff and only stuff we actually use. I have a ways to go but my kitchen is pretty much fully functional, so here's how I organize my very small, farmhouse kitchen.
1. Only keep things that are pretty and you don't mind displaying: I got rid of all of our plastic dishes and cups and limited us to just the white dishes in the open shelving. The cabinet next to it holds my coffee cups and some of my sons dishes that he uses but for the most part, all of our dishes can be displayed. We had WAY too many dishes before, some we didn't even touch in the first year we lived here, so why keep it? Someone else could get good use out of it.
2. Use baskets for storage: I have this large basket on my fridge for storage. I keep my tupperware in it and large mixing bowls. This helps cut down on my cabinet space so much and because they're plastic, I don't mind throwing the tupperware in there ;) It's a messy basket, but it's all in one place!
3. Put your cutting boards on display: This is also an area that I purged and got rid of a few of my cutting boards that I wouldn't want displayed. Who needs 10 cutting boards?? I don't think I had that many, but I got rid of a few and still have 5 left. I just prop them on my counter so they're pretty and easy to get to.
4. Decanter all the things!: I love displaying my food in glass jars. It looks so pretty and makes it super easy to get to. Here are a few of the jars that are on my counter tops. It saves a bunch of space in my "pantry" and looks good while doing it. My dish soap pods are in that white one out of reach of the littles. This is my number one tip when someone asks about decorating their kitchen- Decanter all the things!
5. Bring in dressers, carts or furniture pieces for more storage: I have an old dresser by my fridge that our microwave is on and it holds my linens for my table and nice napkins, some extra coffee tumblers, my wax melts and lighters for candles and card games and dice for when we have friends over... It stores a lot and holds my microwave and toaster so they don't have to be on the counter.
Win, win, WIN! This kitchen cart is new to our kitchen. I got it a couple years ago at a garage sale for $5. I didn't know what I was going to do with it but I couldn't pass it up for $5! I stuck it out on our back deck and we used it for a while to hold our grilling utensils and charcoal. I had been thinking I wanted a cart in here for more storage and I was outside one day and thought "I could paint that!" DUH.... So I wiped off 4 layers of dust (we live on a gravel road) and drug it inside. It was red and silver and I painted it with regular white paint and I used THIS to paint the legs gold. I love how it turned out and now I have more storage.
I hope you enjoyed these easy tips to make your small kitchen more organized! All these tips can be used in any kitchen even just to make your life a little easier. Keeping things on hand on the counter's is super helpful when cooking.
Have a wonderful week my friends and I'll be back again next week with a FULL living room and kitchen tour! It'll be a long one.... so prepare yourselves now. Thank you as always for stopping by to see what I'm up to in this old house of ours.
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