New Kitchen Space!

Our kitchen truly lacks the kind of counter space we need for preparing meals. It's not awful, but we just need to be diligent in keeping the counters cleared and only daily-used appliances are allowed to sit out. One of the struggles is finding space for the produce we use that doesn't get refrigerated. Things like potatoes, avocados, tomatoes (do NOT refrigerate these. I promise, tomatoes taste 50 times better when they haven't been chilled) and onions are nested nicely in our baskets (which are actually from our wedding).  The problem is, these baskets and other items such as our quinoa and almond jar take up space, but get used daily enough that they don't get stored away in our cupboard.

We have this awkward wall in our kitchen. It's only about 40" wide, so it's sort of hard to find something functional for it to do.  The 40" inches isn't so bad as the depth is. You can't put any sort of free-standing china cabinet there, as it would block part of the entrance leading into the living room. Since we also lack cupboard space, we bought a pots & pan rack for that wall, which fit perfectly. The floor space became the dogs food & water bowl spot (not shown in photos).

The pots & pans rack.

Well, last week I had this brilliant idea to simply buy a non-heavy duty shelf to place under this rack to be use for food items ONLY. It's not a prep space, but rather a storage space of the food items we like to have out and ready to use.  This allowed us to clear up precious counter space we need to desperately while cooking meals.

PERFECT! Just the right amount of space to store what we need out!

These baskets were used at our wedding for the dried lavender
that was tossed after the ceremony.

And just to reiterate, do you see how the depth would be an issue for an actual piece of furniture?  And do you see how creatively we matched the bottom brackets of the shelf to the pots & pans rack? I know, so fancy. =)

This goes to show that those awkward spaces in your home can truly be reutilized as a functional space for storage.

To creative spaces!
-Lacey