Making the Most of a Tiny Kitchen

As I've mentioned before, my house is TINY.  It's cute, I love it, and I wouldn't trade it, even for 1,000 more square feet.  But it's really small.  So in order to stay happy with my lack of space, I have to be careful about how I use it.  I have lots of tricks, especially in the kitchen.

1.  Keep items that live on your counters to an absolute minimum.
Every item on your kitchen counters takes up visual space.  Some are necessary, like my darn coffee maker that I can't seem to ditch, some are aesthetic, like the ceramic bowl I made in college, and some things are just clutter, making the room look smaller.  If you're unhappy with your space, it's important to evaluate how many things are visible in your kitchen.  Are they making your kitchen into a pretty, useful place?  Or are they just there making your room look cluttered?

2.  Use every spare inch.
If your home is like mine, you probably didn't have appropriate storage when you moved in (Why are old houses notorious for the lack of storage?) Space is such a hot commodity in a tiny house, and sometimes, you just have to create it for yourself.  When I moved into my house, there were only three miniature drawers in the entire kitchen.  None of them were wide enough to hold a normal utensil organizer.  So, I had to get creative.

I started hanging things from the insides of the cabinet doors.

Command hooks work so perfectly for hanging things up because they're removable and won't damage the wall they're hanging on.  I have pulled some off and placed them elsewhere when I didn't like where they were.

3.  Pare down kitchen items ruthlessly.
The picture below is a good example of NOT following that rule to the letter.  I have two glass measuring cups and two graters.  I really don't need two.  It's just that I have been keeping two around so I don't have to wash dishes so often.  Which is a pretty dumb reason...

Anyway, the cupboard from that picture (the part unseen) is habitually running out of room and disorganized, despite my best efforts.  This summer it will be getting a much needed overhaul, and the duplicates have to go.

4.  Invest in extra shelving and organizational systems.
Unless you live in a house with a custom-built kitchen, chances are that your cupboard space is not ideal.  In my house, some cabinets are way too big and awkward, while others are too small to fit anything useful.  The key was buying tools that would keep my things neat without wasting space.

In the examples below, the drawer where I keep my knives was way too narrow.  I already had the knife holder from my old kitchen, but it was just a little too wide for the drawer.  So, I counted how many spaces I needed in the holder, and had Awesome trim the organizer so it was exactly the size we needed.  Then there was bonus space left over for our pizza cutter!

The other picture is of my baking sheet/cutting board/cooling rack cupboard.  The original space was really strange.  It was the depth of a standard cupboard, but only had one tiny shelf in it.  There was so much wasted space!  So I bought that nifty organizer.  I think it is meant for baking sheets.  Now I can basically "file" all my cooking and cutting boards away and they're ready to go and easy to access.

5.  Make it functional AND pretty!
That rule has been the biggest aha that I've had in this house.  I always used to keep aesthetics and practicality separate.  Then one day, on a whim, I "wallpapered" the inside of my medicine cabinet with scrapbook paper.  The epiphany I had was that I got a happy feeling every time I opened up the medicine cabinet (which makes tooth-brushing much more pleasant), and I also put more effort into keeping the cabinet neat and uncluttered.

I'm sure you saw all the cute paper backings in the above pictures.  Having the insides of my cupboards look pretty makes a huge difference in how I treat them.  I'm more inclined to keep them neat if they look nice.

What tricks do you have for organizing your kitchen?

How to Keep a Tidy[ish] House

My house is little.  It's super cute when it's clean, but even one pillow out of place makes it look disheveled.  I've learned the hard way how to keep it from getting too out of hand.  Here are a few of my tips for keeping your house tidy.

1.  Put rooms to right twice a day.
For me, that means folding throws and putting away the remote and dog toys right before I head out the door to work, and right before bed.  I also put away anything out of place in the bathroom whenever I'm in there.

2.  Put things away as soon as they come in the door.
I don't know about you, but I have someone in my house who walks in the door from work and leaves a trail of belongings behind him: coat in the living room, mail on the kitchen counter, wallet and keys on the couch...it's Sam, of course.  Just can't seem to train that dog yet ;)  But anyway, one of the things that clutters up a tiny house quickly is not putting things away as soon as they enter the door.  I have a routine for putting everything away before I do anything else--keys and lunchbag in the cupboard, purse on its hook, and laptop bag in the spare room.  All ready for tomorrow.  It takes me a couple minutes to get in the door and get everything settled, but then I don't have to worry about my stuff cluttering up the place.

3.  Make the bed.
Amazing how just a tidy bed can make your whole bedroom look better.  Don't believe me?  Try it.  Making the bed seems unnecessary but it can give you a real boost.

4.  Do the dishes.
We're really bad at this one.  We fill up the dishwasher and run it, then the dishes stay there.  And all the new dirty dishes back up.  Then we spend an hour on the weekend cleaning up a disgusting kitchen.  I've tried banning the dishwasher and instituting a no-tv-until-the-dishes-are-done rule, alas, to no avail.  Right now I have a sinkful of dirty dishes, and absolutely no motivation to clean them up.  Obviously we have a lot of work to do to fix this habit.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes.  Just be sure not to follow my example and do your own dishes.  It will make you feel better.

5.  Do periodic decluttering.
If I look back on the past seven years, I have transformed from a person who couldn't have anyone over because of my messy place (Awesome will tell you this is true.  He didn't get to visit my apartment for a very long time when we were dating), to a place where I could have people over comfortably in the next 15 minutes (very kind people who love me a lot and who won't go into the kitchen).  This is primarily because I started decluttering and organizing on a regular basis.  I realized at one point that all my stuff was just responsibility hanging around my neck, making me feel stressed and inadequate. I asked myself,  If my stuff equals extra work, emotional baggage, and responsibility, then do I really want it? No, emphatically NO!

We still have a long way to go before my house is as clean as I'd like it to be, but these 5 tips have helped me over the years.  I hope they help you too.

What tips do you have for keeping your house tidy?

Inexpensive Kitchen Remodel

When you own a fixer-upper, there is always something that needs to be repaired or upgraded. Or added. 

Most of these jobs aren't fun, like the new roof or the anti-termite treatment. 

However, in the long list of never-ending, ever-multiplying, must-be-done-now jobs, my favorite to date has been my cheapo kitchen remodel. 

When we bought our house, the kitchen had decent builder-grade oak cabinets.  They weren't what I wanted or what fit the era of the house, but it was too expensive to change them out. I left them for a couple years while we tackled more important projects. 

Finally I decided to jump in and fix up my kitchen. After lots of research and some advice from a helpful Home Depot sales person, I got a Rustoleum Cabinet Makeover kit. 

I followed the directions on the kit from start to finish. 

The job took me a really long time. The instructions on the package said that you could finish a smallish kitchen in a weekend but I'm not sure that would really be possible if you did a good job. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, painting my kitchen cabinets took me about a month. 

This job is not for the faint of heart. However, it's definitely a great way to cheaply get an updated kitchen. 

I could have sped up the process by skipping the insides of the cabinets, and the doors would have been so much easier to paint if I could have spread them out in a garage. By the end of the summer I was sick of painting, but I would totally do it all over again if I had to. 

Here's the sink area ready for a party I threw. I can't believe how much brighter and cleaner the place looks. 

Here's by the door that leads to the back yard. I love it!

So, if you have a kitchen that isn't exactly what you want, but don't have thousands of dollars for a complete refitting, consider painting your cabinets. You'll be surprised by what a huge difference it makes!

5 Areas to Improve in My Home

When you move into a fixer-upper, there is a never-ending list of things that need to be updated, repaired, or made.  My husband and I have made lots of progress, but we tend to get snowed under with all the jobs that need to be done NOW! 

Periodically, I take inventory of all the things that still need to be done.

Then I get completely overwhelmed and have to take a break and have some coffee (if only!). 

What works best is to take a step back and choose a handful of areas to improve.  Here are my 5 major areas that need help:

1.      Back Yard: (the job that never ends!)  When we moved into our house, the back yard was ready to go in a lot of ways—for a much different family than ours.  There was a nice big porch (which I love), a paved patio, a pergola, a postage-stamp-sized lawn, and tons of gravel.  There was no usable space for plants, flowers, and the huge garden I had been dreaming of.  (There also were no weeds back then). 

 3 and ½ years later, we’ve made lots of changes.  We’ve moved miles of gravel, hauled several trucks worth of compost, and built raised boxes for my garden.  I’ve planted a lot, mainly vegetables and herbs, with a few roses thrown in.  We put in one irrigation system, and have plans to add another.

 We’ve also added to our collection of patio furniture so we have a comfortable place to hang out during beautiful Napa Valley weather.

 I still feel like we are fighting a losing battle in the backyard.  I have dreams of it being a beautiful, peaceful place where we can relax, entertain, and grow lots of food.  I also want it to all be easy to maintain, since we both work long hours and don’t want to spend every waking minute weeding. Sadly, the weeds grow sprout almost as quickly as I pull them. 

2.      TV room:  This is definitely the Man’s room.  It’s not pretty.  It is hard to keep clean.  There’s lots of computer equipment, weights, and guy stuff in there.  I don’t like it.  ‘Nuff said.

 3.    Spare room:  Other than the bathroom, this is the only room in the house that I have not really changed in any way since we bought the house.  I hope to turn it into a nursery soon, so there just has never seemed much point in decorating it at all.  However, I have found that a room with no purpose quickly becomes the junk-dropping zone.  Not good!

 4.      Laundry Room/Hallway Pantry: My nemesis!  Yes, I should be grateful that I have a dedicated room for laundry (I really am grateful), but this room is dark, dingy, and humid.  Plus, it’s usually a lot dirtier than this.  I really hate laundry, and this room has not made it easier.

 5.      Shed:  When you have no garage, you either need to have very little stuff, or good storage (or preferably, both).  Our shed is tiny, has very little shelving, and is sort of a black-hole for our belongings. 

     The best solution I can think of, short of another shed, is to install lots of shelving and other forms of storage.

So, there are some of the major areas that we need to improve. I'm not sure where we'll start working. Now we're building a run for the chicks so we'll see what we feel inspired to begin after that's finished.