Kitchen switch-a-roo

Today I completely switched around my kitchen, also known as "driving my husband completely banana's". Chris HATES change and complains about it incessantly. However, the next time I change it around he'll complain that he wants it back the way before - which he also complained about.

My kitchen appears to have a bit of cabinet space, but it's an illusion. The cabinets are shaped funky, there are weird dividers that make it difficult to store things effectively, and we just seem to have never enough space. I hate things on my counter, so even the toaster is stored in a cabinet (this habit I picked up from my mother-in-law!). The only thing allowed on my counter is Betsy, my new mixer. Ain't she beautiful!

Anyway, Chris was flying late tonight and most of the times this means an easy going evening. Chris is leaving soonish for 5+ months and so we are now transitioning back into "getting on with life when Daddy is gone" phase. We've been very lucky for the past 3 years Chris has been on a special duty assignment that has kept him from deploying and in the past year hasn't even gone on a TDY because of my surgeries but thats all about to change. He'll be back to being gone 6-9 months out of the year soon and so we are preparing for that.

My plan is to accent my kitchen and dining area with Polka Dots. I love Polka Dots! For now, I'm just cleaning it up and trying to find new space for my new gadgets. Such as this beauty I've been lusting after for a while

Chris jokes that I'm a disgrace. He bought me the iPad2 for our anniversary and I was disappointed because I wanted Betsy. After a few months I decided, with his blessing, to sell the iPad to get what I really wanted. This was also on sale for about $60 less than usual so I had to jump on it. This may deserve a name in the future. I get very sad when food spoils or gets freezer burn.

In my already cramped kitchen I had no room for all my new gadgets.

I decided to start in the dreaded tupperware cabinet. This cabinet is scary. We have so much tupperware, but we can never find anything. I swear there is a land out there where tupperware lids and socks are partying together.

See how scary it is? Also, see that annoying divider that makes it difficult to get anything LARGE into or out of that cabinet? So frustrating! I wanted to separate our tupperware from the cutting boards since we use the cutting boards very frequently and it's very hard to pull them out without a bunch of tupperware raining down with it. We have this drawer that we store the placemats and cloth napkins in

Which is the perfect size for the cutting boards, and it's located right next to the stove so it makes it very convenient. So now I had to relocate the placemats (I'm planning to buy or make some beautiful polka dot placemats!) Back when we bought our couches we also bought a coffee table that was entirely too large. We recently moved it behind the couches as more surface space in the dining room, and it has drawers and a shelf that would work for the napkins and placemats.

And now our four cutting boards are located in a much nicer spot

For our tupperware, there wasn't a single cabinet that would work well, so I was reduced to buying an additional storage unit. I am not pleased by this, and although it works well it is very bulky and ugly. I'm hoping to find a better solution, but for now this is where our tupperware is

I have yet to find "green" tupperware. If anyone knows of any please let me know!

Now I needed to move my pots and pans into my new empty tupperware cabinet. This is my awful pots and pans cabinet. It makes it very hard to pull anything out without something falling on your foot because of the weird half shelf. These poor pots and pans were gifted to Chris and I on Anthony's first Christmas by my parents. They are great pots and pans but they are nearing their life span. We are looking into upgrading to stainless steel, one pot and pan at a time as they are insanely expensive!

And this is my plates, casserole dish, bowls, and the rest of pans cabinet. Annoying.

And this is my new pots and pans cabinet in my old tupperware cabinet (Are you keeping this straight? lol).

And in my old pots and pans cabinet is where my new food saver is stored, as well as Betsy's attachments!

Thats my extra mixing bowl, my ice cream maker attachment and my bin of other attachments. On the top, weird half shelf perfectly fits my food saver and storage bags. The ice cream maker can and should be stored in the freezer, so this is the picture after I realized that

Now I need something to fill that gap!

I forgot to take a picture of my cup cabinet prior to emptying it out, but I thought it would be best to put the cups over where the plates and bowls were now that I took out most of the pans.

We have more plates and bowls than that, they were all in the dishwasher.

I needed to move the cleaners from their lower cabinet because Charlie kept getting into it. So they went into the old cup cabinet.

Here is Anastasia taking the cleaner out and handing it to me to put up top.

This is another weirdly shaped cabinet. It goes way towards the back but it makes it hard to get to the stuff back there without practically climbing into the cabinet.

Cleaners are one of my few non-"green" things, my OCD makes it hard for me to trust that something is clean without harsh cleaners. I'm working on it.

Here they are crammed in the new cabinet. This had three shelves in it, but I had to remove one and change the height of the other one in order to fit anything into it. The shelves, prior, could hardly fit anything that was remotely tall. See my inventory sheet? (My computer just turned off and I thought I lost this post! I was about to throw my hands up and laugh/cry).

I forgot to take a picture of the after cleaner cabinet. It now stores the huge pots I couldn't get past the weird divider, and the kids cups. It drives me crazy to hear 20 times a day times 3 kids "Can I have a cup!" so I thought it would be the most logical thing to put the kids cups where the kids can reach them. I now fear I will be washing every kids cup every single day, but at least they can reach them.

Around this time we had a mini-family crisis and the rest of the kitchen switch-a-roo had to be put on hold. Hopefully I'll find time soon to finish it. I only have a few more cabinets to go through.

So far I've made muffins, tortillas, and pancakes with Betsy. The pancakes were for dinner tonight, and they were super simple to make and much less messy than usual.

These are some pictures of the Bear eating pancakes. We've had such a hard time getting him to eat that I was so happy he ate some pancake! He is nursing about 18 hours a day at the moment, and it's driving me bananas. Hopefully he'll be able to eat more food soon!