Under the Sink Storage

This post may put you to sleep, but I'm an organizing lover and figuring out a solution for random kitchen storage has taken me a while to perfect. I really have moved things around a lot and have finally found the best solution, so I figured I should share. It's strange how happy this stuff makes me.

Anyways, when we first moved into our home, the only cleaning supplies that were stored under the sink were dishwasher detergent and dish soap. There were other random things, but nothing had a place.. it served no function really.

Sorry, that picture was taken with my iPhone, pre-Canon. My dilemma was basically what products do I keep here, and how should I do it? We had 3 kinds of garbage bags stored in 3 different places throughout the house. After switching things around for a long time, I finally found a balance.

Ignore the lack of prettiness, but now each item has a specific spot and is completely accessible. All of these items are used solely in our kitchen. I don't have to come to the kitchen for anything I need to use in the bathroom, etc. I also never have to leave the kitchen to find an appropriate cleaning product. I was also growing tired of heading to the pantry for our mini sweeper. It is obviously dirty and I wanted to avoid keeping it where we keep food/food products. The same goes for the fly swatters.. we had been just lying them on the counter (ew). Enter a solution from Command hooks thanks to a random Target trip!

These little guys were perfect, and on clearance for $1.89 I think. SO. Happy. 

There was also this other issue...

Towels for drying the dishes. I do a handful of dishes every night and I always set them to dry on a pair of towels next the sink. Obviously they don't really get dirty, so I keep them around for multiple uses. I was keeping them under the sink but it started to gross me out a little, particularly once we started keeping the little duster in there.

So I got to thinking about other open spaces in our kitchen. We have this awkward cabinet just across from the sink in the island that wasn't being put to good use. 

I transferred over a few bins I had to fill it up (it's quite deep). One bin keeps the towels for drying in between uses, the other keeps dirty dish rags. I use a new rag each time I do dishes (no sponges here), so they pile up on the counter fairly quickly. And then I would take them to the laundry room and they would pile up on the floor until I had a full load of towels. Not ideal.

 Yep, these are dilemmas of my life. But solving them makes me pretty giddy, no matter how simple.

Kitchen Reveal

I meant to finish this before moving onto the cruise posts, but oh well.

I have clearly done a pretty poor job of documenting house progress. I know I haven't shown pretty much any room finished, but that's because I feel like there aren't any rooms that truly are finished. The one exception is the kitchen.

Andy and I both adore our kitchen. There isn't much we would change about it.

Not only is it beautiful (at least to us), it's pretty darn functional. I have oodles of counter space and storage, and overall the flow works well. I talked about my kitchen wish list in this post here, and I think we've pretty much nailed it.

White cabinets were something I always wanted, because they are so fresh and clean looking, but still traditional. Ours aren't a bright white, but rather an ivory or cream. I always envisioned more of a white, but this is the whitest color they offered. I'm still happy with the look. I also like the look of a classic shaker door, but with some detail. This design was a perfect marriage of the two. The navy wall color is pretty bold, but it came out exactly how I wanted it to. I wanted a high contrast color to break up the white. Not very many houses have bold navy walls, but almost everyone who's visited our house comments on how they like it.

Dura Supreme Cabinetry - Chapel Hill Door

The countertops might be my absolute favorite thing of all, though. We knew we needed to get formica countertops for budget purposes, but that didn't mean they had to be ugly. We saw a sample in passing at our local home store and it had been our number one choice since day one. It is the perfect way to connect the cabinets and wall color. The pattern keeps with the bright kitchen feel, but also looks higher end (to me atleast).  The countertop never looks dirty, I love the edging that we ended up choosing, and it just plain works.

Stools from Great Escape found here

I also love the look of the stools at the island. They are perfect and give the room a touch of modern. The stainless steel matches the appliances and also the light fixture above the island. Oh baby, do I love that fixture. We found it on sale at the KBL store and from the minute I saw it I knew it would be perfect. Andy disagreed, but after a return trip I finally convinced him that we needed to take it home with us. We also have a lot of pot lights throughout the kitchen, which are great for brightening the room up. Good lighting can do wonders..

The floors on the other hand give me a bit of grief. We spent months it seems going through flooring, and none were what I had envisioned and were within our budget. This one seemed to be the closest thing to what I wanted, so we went with it. It's an engineered hard wood. I love the look of it, however it is impossible to keep clean. Since it's dark, it shows pretty much everything, but I also think it's worse because there isn't really a finish on it. I can mop the floor and as soon as my clean bare feet put a toe on those floors there is a mark. I've given up. Mopping doesn't help. Footprints are more prominent since so much light shines in from the sliding door. Thankfully, they aren't visible at night.

I should note that in all the designing of this house, the things I chose from instinct are the things that work the best. The stools, countertops, and light fixture were all things I had to have from the minute we saw them, and I couldn't love them more. There are other items (especially in other rooms in the house) that I 100% settled on for the sake of having to choose something, and those things just don't work. I have learned that taking your time and waiting for the right products/items is best, but that's really hard for people like me and Andy who are impatient and want things done now.

I should mention that all of our cupboards are full. At least full in the sense that they all have items stored away, but are not overflowing. It's the perfect amount of space. I will probably do separate posts on the appliances and organizing because that's just opening a whole 'nother can of worms.

We also have to work on getting a little desk for underneath our command center. I don't like having the pens and papers and coin bucket on the island counter, but right now there is no other convenient place to put them. I'm on the hunt for a fuzzy rug to put in the open space in that area, too. I am still perfecting the rest of the staging of the countertop and bookshelves. I don't like counter clutter, but the compost bin, utensil bin, olive oil, and paper towels have nowhere else to go. I need them to look like they belong. The bookshelves are fine for now, but I'd love to more effectively use this space for seasonal decorating. On the opposite end, I keep my iHome, cooking books, and recipes. I will eventually come up with a more efficient way of storing those, too. Will our to-do list ever be complete??


Check in tomorrow for more of a run down of our cruise in the Bahamas!

Creating our Kitchen

I've been fantasizing about my dream kitchen forever. It's the number one place that I'm willing to spend money on, mostly because of my own happiness but also because kitchens are an investment. You use your kitchen SO MUCH and need it to be functional for 20 or 30 years. Keeping those two areas in mind led me to my kitchen wish list..

Source

1. Beauty
I love bright kitchens. I don't think I've ever seen a bright kitchen that I thought was ugly. Therefore, white cabinets were my top pick. It took some convincing Andy but I finally won him over :)

2. Higher End Stainless Appliances
I'm a bit of a foodie. Making good food is important to me. Plus, stainless steel appliances are kind of hot. I wanted to make sure we got highly rated appliances that could last me a long time.

KitchenAid Double Oven - Architect Series

3. Open (but not too open) concept
It's important to me that our kitchen open up to our living space. When I'm cooking, I don't want to be completely isolated, and I know having a view to the living room will come in handy when we have children. Therefore, open concept was a must.

However, I do want a somewhat formal dining space, and I feel like you can't completely have that in an uber open concept area. I am not a fan of having both a separate formal dining room and a large table in your kitchen. (Let's be real, you would always use the kitchen table. Why waste space for a formal dining that you use maybe twice a year??!) So, we needed to create a dining space connected to our kitchen that could also be appropriate for formal occasions. Our dining is slightly tucked away off our kitchen on the opposite side from the living space. Like I said, open but not too open :) The best of both worlds.

Sarah Richardson Design - Oceanview Estate

4. Island Space
My parents have an island and it's super functional. I can't imagine making a recipe facing a wall or top cabinet anymore. It's just not as fun. And it's nice to have extra seating on the island, too.

5. Storage
This is a no-brainer. I scoured Pinterest high and low for storage options before putting in our cabinetry order. The short version of my storage must haves:
-pull out shelves in all of the cabinets
-an in-the-drawer knife block (boosts kid safety and less counter clutter)
-deep drawers to put pots and pans in with an attached space for pot lids
-slotted storage for cooking sheets (I HATE pulling those darn things out of crammed spaces)

Source

6. A kick-butt pantry
The pantry is so amazing that it warrants an entirely separate post. But I did feel the need to mention it here because it is technically a part of our kitchen. It. Is. Awesome.

The BEST NEWS OF ALL? Our kitchen is nearly complete! The last appliances got installed today and I can't wait to see it all. We just need to give it a good polish and it should be ready to go :) I can't wait to get cookin!