So it's three full months in the new kitchen, and I'm still... tweaking. Oh, the core elements are all in place. Well in place. I'm comfortable with where most everything is, I can move from prep to stove to grill to sink and back and forth without hassle, and nearly everything not only has a place, but actually has a pretty decent place.
Except, until recently, pantry stuff. You see, once you find room in the cupboards for the plates and the glasses and the oils and the vinegars and the prep dishes and the squeeze bottles and the bowls and the third-tier spices, well, there's about one full cupboard left. And this cupboard is difficult to get to. Awkward. And there's not enough room in it for all the pantry stuff anyway. Plus I've been keeping things on top of the fridge, and that's something I want to get at least a little bit out of the habit of, on account of there being a heating/AC vent right above it, too.
So I've been looking for ways to expand my pantry space, and lucked into two important additions, as you can see. The hanging baskets are something Cathy scavenged years ago and were tucked away for someday when we got a house. Well, that time is now, and there happened to be a perfect bit of space that was neither being used nor walked through in which to hang it.
It keeps my three favorite alliums - shallots on the top, garlic in the middle, storage onions on the bottom. I go through them fast enough that the light isn't a problem, and they stay nice and dry hanging out in the open. Anything that doesn't fit in the baskets when I buy in bulk from Costco can stay stashed under a cupboard, cool and dry until they're needed.
And then there's the goddamned white tower. Here's the deal. I basically had a hole, about one foot square, between the banister and the doorway to the hall. If I could find something, like a series of shelves, that'd fit in a 1' x 1' space and go hellaciously vertical, then I could get a lot of stuff in a small footprint and really make the best use of the space.
After about six weeks of thinking, looking, and failing, I had an epiphany in Target. I shouldn't be looking in the kitchen section, or the home organizing section. There is one room of the house that specializes in tiny footprints and going vertical. I should be looking in the BATH section.
And sure enough, in the bath section, I found a flat-pack "Towel Tower". Five and a half feet high. Eleven and a half inches square. Two enclosed sections and pegs for adjustable shelves. From a form factor standpoint, it was damn near perfect, which was both a gift... and a curse.
I swear to fuck, I spent HOURS putting this thing together. The construction was poorly designed, the instructions were frequently misleading and in at least one case completely wrong, and they left way too much margin for error, leading to wooden pegs poking through the veneer in a couple of spots.
We will not even discuss the door hinges, which were not only way too elaborate for a forty buck piece of furniture, but were impossible to correctly install by following the borderline incomprehensible directions. The doors were an hour and a half on their own.
Also, for some reason, there's a completely non-structural arbitrary gap in the holes for the adjustable shelf pegs, which means that I can't actually get any of the shelves in an ideal place. Luckily, the best possible position for the shelves does happen to leave me with a spot the right size for tomato paste and water chestnut cans, but it was still maddening on principle.
So I hate it for lots of reasons, but once it was together, in place, and loaded full of canned beans, bagged dried pasta, boxed broth, and a variety of tomato products, you just cannot beat that perfect form factor. All the important pantry stuff is now safely put away, with enough room freed up elsewhere so that the last couple of boxes full of pantry stuff from the move are finally emptied and have a proper home somewhere in the kitchen. Thank fuck.