Situation:A kitc
hen that did not make a lot of sense. Many drawers contained a mish mash of items and there were no zones set up for cooking, baking or food prep. The poor wife had to get onto a stool to reach her spices!
Challenge:
Deciding what zones to create within a very limited selection of choices. As a small galley kitchen, the counter and cabinet areas were small and there weren’t a great deal of choices for creating zones that would hold everything we needed for each type of activity.
Even though the owners had installed slide out drawers, the deep pantry was not working at all. Things were getting lost which resulted in purchasing duplicate items which resulted in more clutter. A veritable black hole!
Solution:
I recommended installing a giant lazy susan on one pantry shelf for all canned goods. Another slide out shelf was designated specifially for breakfast and now includes cereals, coffee, oatmeal and bread. We positioned the coffee pot and toaster right beside this shelf for easy morning prep.
The bottom pantry shelf is now equipped with a large laundry basket which conveniently holds all snack items and makes it easy for the 3 year old to get his snacks at night.
The cooking prep zone now has a top drawer filled with spices, a lazy susan for condiments and oils and utensils in a pot right beside the stove.
What the clients said:
When we called Kathi, we were at our wits end and felt that instead of us managing the house, the house was managing us. We were to the point that we were both so upset by it that we could not step aside and agree on where anything should be stored.
Our problem was never, “I cant get rid of that”, it was instead, “where should this thing live”?
Now we both feel comfortable and have opened our lines of communication. We are able to take a step back and decide together as a team where things should live.
The incredible thing is that out of everything we have given away, the only thing we miss is the wrong set of handmixer blades that we accidentally donated.
The great thing is that now we are home more because eating at home is easier. It is also more comfortable to be here because we are not sitting around in a bunch of clutter. Also, because we are more comfortable and want to be here, we now both care more about what type of furniture we bring into our home. It used to be we could never agree and didn’t care as much.
