Tuesday, August 30, 2005

The Zen of Kitchens

We are still working very hard on Miss Odessa's house at the farm, preparing it for our move. We still have the two rooms to paint and maybe can move forward with the painting this weekend. The past few days I've been organizing the kitchen while Marvin concentrated on cleaning out the carport. The lower cabinets had quite a bit of mouse activity in them, so I vacuumed them out, sanitized them, and covered them with shelf paper. I have washed all of her dishes, glasses, and silverware, sorting out what we will be keeping versus what is yard sale material. It has taken me several weeks to finish this task. There is an upper cabinet that I need to sort through one more time, because there are things in there that will also go in the yard sale I'm having this weekend. I have decided to devote the cabinets nearest the stove to the pots and pans I use more frequently in my daily cooking. The cabinets on the other side of the room will be devoted to my baking pans and the serving dishes I use. It took me a while to come to grips with how I wanted to organize things.

The pantry is in a small room on the inside wall of the kitchen. There are four very long shelves where I can stock enough groceries to last a very long time. This room was overrun with mice when I first started working on it. I regretfully had to throw away most of the groceries in it due to the high level of mouse activity. What I learned was that anything that is in a cardboard box will need to be transferred to a glass or plastic storage container to keep the mice out. This includes cereal, ramen noodles, sugar, drink mixes, jello, and flour. I have some very nice canisters that I can use for this purpose. On each side of the sink are also cabinets. The left side cabinet will hold my cookbook collection. The right side cabinet will hold my spices and herbs.

What I have learned over the past few months is to be grateful for this house that we have inherited. It has not been in the greatest shape, but we are going to make it into a place we can be proud of. I think that its not what you inherit that matters, but what you do to improve it and make it better for those who will be inheriting it from you.

Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?