The contents of many kitchen cupboards are strewn around my kitchen.
It started with me having the bright idea of using the corner wall cupboard to store my small collection of sandwich plates, and possibly all the tea party china (instead of putting it in the loft). It's spilled over into the reorganising of many cupboards.
So. The corner wall cupboard is horrible. It's very deep, it's impossible to see what's in there, much less reach anything. It's like the cupboard of death. More stuff gets shoved in the front and everything gets pushed backwards to die of disuse.
I thought I could easily stash the china on the middle shelf. Or the bottom shelf. I'd need to empty a shelf in a different cupboard to take the contents, but it seemed doable.
That was 8 hours ago.
Admittedly, I took my time. I emptied out the two lower shelves , and played around.. One shelf contained, mainly, spare glassware; the other contained bottles of alcohol (mostly expensive sherries and ports and other old lady exotica) plus my cocktail making stuff, some flasks, and various other bits.
I looked at the best way to get the china to fit. I thought about whether it was a good use of space. It seemed like a good idea, cramming the china into the recesses of an inaccessible space. I realised I had the potential to have an erected two tier cake stand in but that would mean the china wou;dn't fit unless I used both shelves, and that seemed a a lot of space for not a lot of benefit.
I made a decision about the china, and that is now sorted. Well, the bits I'm using are sorted. I've got two cake stands erected, with 4 cups/saucers to match one, and 2 cups & saucers to match the other. I've got the matching sugar and milk jugs. I've also used a rack thing to stand my sandwich platters on their sides, and I've allowed for two sandwich platters that I'm still trying to source.
The remaining cake stands now need drawstring bags so I can store them in the crate with the rest of the tea party china, and then that can go in the loft. I should be doing that instead of writing this blog but I don't have any room to cut fabric. I suppose I should be finishing clearing space so I could do that.
I'd sorted out the spare glasses, moved those that I'm keeping m into another cupboard (which I'd emptied in readiness), and those that need rehoming. I had a little sidestep into a minor reorg of the glasses cupboard. I took out a few that we rarely use and put them in the spares cupboard, and then rearranged the shelves to make some of the balloon glasses easier to access. Everything in there needs a wash, so I'll take a photo of it and put them all in the dishwasher when the dishwasher is next empty.
Having got this far, I didn't really want to just stuff everything else back on the bottom shelf. I looked at Options. Options were rather limited, so I decided on a heavy duty "lazy Susan" for the alcohol. It's 12 inches across, so it'll fit to one side of the cupboard rather than being in the middle and making the rest of the shelf unusable.
At some stage, I opened the next cupboard along the line, which is a 300mm wide very tall cupboard. It contained many years of homemade fruit liqueurs, plus various bottles of interesting spirits that had obviously popped up on my Facebook feed (or some other form of advertising) at some time or other. I transferred as many of the Interesting Spirits into the official Drinks Cupboard, but there wasn't a lot of space and I've got a lot left. I have just thought of a possible solution, but I don't have the inclination to empty and sort that cupboard too. Not today, anyway.
Anyway. I stared at the inside of the cupboard for some time, considering my options. I wondered about using it for my cocktail stuff - the equipment I mean, not the syrups and stuff. (although that would have been a good idea too. Too late now). I looked at the years (and years) of fruit liqueurs, and decided to pour down the sink any that were open. The rest were crammed on to one shelf at the top. They'll be able to embalm me in it when I die!
Eventually, after a bit of trial and error, I decided to put the vacuum sealer bags in there. The chamber sealer is directly under that cupboard (well, it does at the moment), and the narrowness is useful in supporting tall flimsy things. I had to get DH to move a shelf, which was more work than it should have been (and would have required me to unscrew the cupboard door).
I thought about what I would do with the drawer where the bags currently lived. It's a rubbish drawer, so it needs to be something that isn't accessed very often and isn't too heavy. That excluded everything I currently had spread over on my kitchen worktop and floor.
I mentally went through the contents of the other cupboards, evaluating each set and quickly discarding it. I reached the base corner cupboard, and thought about the two small crates of bakeware that had resided in there, unused, since I went through and had a major bakeware declutter some years ago. I briefly wondered about getting rid of it all, but it is all quite expensive stuff and I don't know anyone who would make good use of it. I'm hoping my granddaughter-on-law will turn out to be a baker, and I can offer it to her. In the meantime, it's staying. I was sure I'd be able to get them into that drawer. So I did.
As a result, I had a gap where the bakeware had been. It isn't a good cupboard for access, so there wasn't any point putting the bottles there. I ended up taking most of the contents out and resorting them, so that I could more easily access some of the bits that I did use. This left me with a better cupbord and a bit of space, ehich I promptly filled with some bread shaping baskets that have been homeless on the worktop for some time now.
The diversion into sorting out the 300mm cupboard and the other cupboards has resulted in a slightly better organised couple of areas, but I'm no further forward with getting all this stuff back in a cupboard.
And I've got an itch to move some other stuff around. That's why I'm writing this. It's my equivalent of lying down until the feeling passes.
.....
I've attempted to put my cocktail equipment in the cupboard, and I'm seeing how it looks in a moment. I'm going to evacuate the cocktail syrups from the Official Drinks Cupboard, and use the space for the stuff that I've now got lying around. I haven' decided where the syrups are going to live, and I haven't ruled out pouring (some of) them away.
.......
OK, the cocktail stuff is now in the huge red flour bin. The semolina flour was several years out of date (we've been using shop bought pasta instead of making it, I didn't realise how long that had been going on) so I threw it away.
The reorganisation continued through to bed time, by which time I'd re-reorganised the bakeware and the other drawer in that cupboard, re-reorgansed the corner base cupboard, and reorganised two other drswers in two other cupboards.
The cupboards look great. I've got a pile of stiff to donate. And a large tray of stuff that I still have to rehome.
......
It's now the following day. The tray remains unsorted. I have, however, made one pouch for one of the cake stands. And I've done a load of unrelated stuff (like bought some new bird feeders, bought a secondhand sideboard, plus done various domestics)
I will finish all today.
I will.
I will try.
