Natalie & Christopher in Germany

Hey there!

We are Natalie and Christopher. We blog about life in the suburbs of Orlando, FL with no kids and one dog. Thanks for checking in.

Kitchen reorganization plans

My pantry overhaul plans have inspired me to rethink my kitchen too!

Now that we have lived in our kitchen a while, there are a few things that we could rearrange to make life a little easier. For example, I don't have a great place to keep serving pieces (platters, large bowls) that I don't use often. I am hoping that once we decide on some kind of buffet or sideboard for our dining room we can store some of those things in there, but for now I need to figure out a place to put them that they will be safe.

The other thing I've been having a hard time deciding on is what small appliances to keep out and which to keep away. Right now I have my coffee maker, espresso machine and coffee grinder out to make a kind of coffee bar area. The cabinet above them contain all of our coffee mugs, travel mugs, coffee, filters, scoop, etc. I like how this set up looks a lot, so I will be keeping this out even though we don't use it every day.

In addition to my coffee station, I have a toaster, crocpot, bread machine, and kitchen aid stand mixer out on my counters. I know this sounds like A LOT but I have kind of a ton of counter space. I have about 9 feet of uninterrupted counter space on one side of my kitchen, plus a couple feet here and there on two other sides.

I keep my mixer out because I use it more than once a month, and it's heavy and a pain to move around. I'm on the fence about storing it away.

I honestly don't know why I keep my crocpot out, I use it 1-2 times a month probably, but it's light weight, smallish and easy to move around. This might be going into hiding when not in use.

I use my bread machine at least once a week. But even this is pretty easy to move around, and could possible find a hiding place when not being used.

The toaster... I kind of feel like it's so small that putting it away would be more trouble than it's worth.

I would also kind of like to get a toaster oven. We used to have one, but it was round on top and had a really hard to clean door. We ended up donating that to Goodwill a little while before we moved. I miss having a toaster over though. It was nice for reheating pizza and toasting bread and melting cheese for a sandwich at the same time, I don't really know if those two reasons are really enough to warrant adding another appliance to my collection, but it is something I think about.

If you have any suggestions on my appliance situation please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.

Lent 2013

New storage containers for my pantry