Storage

After living here for 6 months I'm starting to get a feel for what I like and don't like in our kitchen.  My husband had the idea of  getting rid of all of our dishes except 1 plate, 1 bowl, 1 dessert plate, 1 fork/knife/spoon and 1 glass for each of us. Less dishes to wash, right? So that's what we did. I hate it. There is never enough forks or spoons. We make 3 meals a day in our tiny kitchen and if you are tasting your food or shredding roasts you run out of forks and spoons for the meal.

Without running water its not easy just to wash the fork you are using. I would like a full set of flatware. I have to heat water on the stove to do dishes and empty the sludge/rinse bucket, I tend to wait until after dinner to wash all the dishes for the day and just do it once. I have my Grandma's china set stored away so if we do have guests over for dinner I have plates for them to eat off of.

Having such few dishes does save us a lot of space. Digging the pots and pans out of the cabinet was annoying so we used empty vertical space above the bathroom to hang them. Its so much easier and less noisy putting them away.

My husband finally got our vent a hood installed. We found this in the scratch and dent area of the store for $150 regular price $700 and  I love this thing. It sucks any grease or bad smell right out of the place. I can render down my deer fat now for soap making. I'm squirreling away money for tiles for a back splash.

I had to get creative and use empty spaces and vertical spaces because our place does not have any closets. I did a shelf and hook set up by the front door with low hooks for my son's gear. I got this cool bench/shoe rack from Ikea.

I used this normally awkward space on the fridge to hang hooks for the broom/dustpan. I had the counter fabricator make this tiny L shape as a micro office desk. We keep the computer, phones and pens and paper here.

We built shelves at the top of the stairs as a mini pantry.

We definitely need more shelves especially when we get the garden going for canning and fermenting.