Furniture journal: the pantry shelves are done!!!

I put the back on the pantry shelves and Michael and I wrestled them into the kitchen.  

The wood  brightens te kitchen. The new lights help as well. 

Moving Irene into her new space allowed us to move the table into what used to be her living room. The table and chairs pretty well fill that room, but comfortably so. That table used to be in the middle of the kitchen, in front of the chair still remaining in the kitchen. it made a tight squeeze to get anywhere in the kitchen, as well as through the kitchen to any other room. It is a joy to have room to walk from the stove to the fridge and from one room into another without having to dodge obstacles every step of the way.  

The pantry Clyde built. We will still use this space, but will modify it to be a bit more accessible and have fewer places for things to fall between the cracks.  

The canisters on the floor did not fit in the old pantry. As Irene didn’t bake bread, she didn’t need much flour. Michael’s bread is a daily treat. I like to encourage him to use as many different types of flour as possible.  Now I can indulge him without tripping over the canisters. Cleaning the floor will be easier too. 

Full! 

My hope is that we will stop buying duplicate canned goods now that we can see how many we still have. I counted four bottles of black bean garlic sauce. We won’t use that much sauce in a year!  And we will use more if we see it and can say, “Hey, how about stir fry with black bean sauce for dinner?”  We had hot chocolate for dessert today, having discovered that we had some.  We are visual people. If we can’t see it, it doesn’t exist. 

I have several more articles to build to make the kitchen more functional. We need more counter space, and need to arrange things so that the space we have is more useful.   Countertops are usually 24” deep. I wish to build 16” deep countertops to tuck here and there without blocking the traffic lanes. Those projects will have to wait until next year. In the meantime, I’m thrilled with increasing our storage space right now!