House cleaning avoidance = Kitchen counter makeover

I keep hoping I’ll miraculously get a job and thus, a reason to rehire my cleaning lady, but week after week goes by and no one offers me a job (no matter how many times I stare at my phone, willing it to ring, or refresh my email — doesn’t the universe know a watched inbox ALWAYS offers you jobs? Or is that not how the saying goes?) and so then week after week goes by where I don’t clean because I hate cleaning and whatever, LG ruins everything anyway, with her sticky hands and inability to grasp a bottle without spilling milk everywhere and ew.

It was during a period of cleaning avoidance a couple weeks ago that I decided to reorganize the kitchen counters and I must say, I quite like the result. Here, let me lead you on a tour of my kitchen counters (RIVETING.)

First, you should see how it looked before, so here you go:

And it still pretty much looks like that, only better, and with more depth and (insert other designy phrases here):

First of all, I ditched the spice rack and consolidated all my herbs and spices into the actual spice cabinet. Spices or otherwise, I really dislike having multiple homes for the same (type of) item. For example, I keep towels in five different areas of my home (the kitchen, the downstairs storage closet (rags), our bathroom, the linen closet, and LG’s bathroom.) They all have different uses, yes, but the fact that there are FIVE different places in my home that house towels just grates on me.

(Did I ever tell you about how I used to organize my money by serial number? Stew on that.)

Anyway, so I consolidated the spices (AND ANGELS SANG) and then I moved the wine over to where the toaster was and hid the toaster in the corner where the wine used to be. (Toasters are so ugly — why didn’t I do that sooner?) (Plus that’s where I keep the bread, so it just MAKES SENSE.)

Then I took that platter (made by Chris’s uncle and given to us as a wedding gift by Chris’s aunt) and put it in a holder-upper thing that used to house our wedding guestbook upstairs, so now you can actually see it (and how nice it is!)

Since I was on a roll with propping up platters (new band name?), I took the stainless one we received as a wedding gift and propped it up too, but I don’t love it, because it feels precarious and like it’s not meant to be propped. So, that platter is a work in progress, but I’ll make it work somehow.

It needs something, right? Any ideas?

Not done with proppin’ platters (like poppin’ collars, but definitely more gangsta), I took a third platter and put all our oils/vinegars/salts/peppers on it, mostly to give that platter a use, but also so I don’t have bits of salt and pepper all over my counters. (I prefer the salt and pepper bits be contained on a platter; I know it makes no sense, see above re: money organization.)

Finally, I framed this card, which my mother-in-law gave me years ago and which had been sitting propped(!) in a corner:

Please note I am currently out of wine, which seems like a bad omen given the message on the card.

So! That’s the kitchen re-do. I’d love to move the coffee pot elsewhere (out of sight), but I don’t know where it’d go and it’s really quite convenient there (what you can’t see is the cupboard above the coffee pot houses the coffee and mugs and other hot beverage accoutrement) and I just don’t think I’m ready to make the commitment of moving around the contents of my cupboards…But give me another week of avoiding cleaning and we might just get there.