A Brand New Kitchen

Man, if you like cooking and all your cookware stinks, get married. And if you like cooking, but your kitchen doesn't make any sense, get married to someone handy, preferably with lots of time on his hands. I do not actually advise marrying solely for the bounty of gifts or to get a helpful partner willing to do your bidding. But these are major bonuses for the home cook, at least they were for me.

My very wonderful friends and family showered me with tons of shiny happy gifts, mostly for the kitchen, because they know what I like, at my bridal shower. A few gaps were filled in by wedding gifts. We set everything aside because we really wanted to treat the new stuff right (as opposed to the crappy treatment our current secondhand kitchenware deserves). Reorganizing small spaces for maximum efficiency is one of the things my new husband does best, and having piles of "stuff" sitting around, not in their proper places, makes him nuts. So for a week or two after our honeymoon, every day when I got home from work, I'd get a report on what he'd done to make our kitchen an easier place to work. I wish I had some "Before" shots, but here are some long shots of the "After."

Wave hi to Kika, the Cat Who Refused To Move.

Do it with me, now: deep breath in, deep breath out. Gorgeous, if I do say so myself, and I can because aside from picking out stuff for other people to buy me, I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Let's go in for a closer look:

Behold! Shelves to hold the mighty overflow of pantry-type goods in our pantry-deprived kitchen. An optimized baker's cart with space for my KitchenAid accessories, stacking cooling racks and baskets, and the kitchen linens concealed in a neat picnic basket. A ghetto baker's rack made from Ikea garage shelves with space enough for all our small appliances (including the new toaster oven that blows the circuit if we have it on at the same time as anything else), as well as my cookbooks and ridiculously vast array of hostess aprons. Plus? The TIME! Shiny gleaming brand-spanking-new Calphalon pans hang on the wall near the stove, giving me easy access to the cookware I use most.

A shiny new Cuisinart microwave and indulgence-laden espresso machine round out our collection of evil-looking appliances, along with the KitchenAid mixed and Krups coffeemaker. The whiteboard is magnetic and mounted on the cabinet closest to the stove so I can hang recipes from its clips. The Tupperware/bakeware cabinet was thinned out to the most useful items only. The baking items were moved to a small, little-used cabinet above the stove. The spices were placed on lazy susans, so that they would AT LAST not be stacked on top of each other. It all makes so much glorious SENSE. Not pictured (because I think I reached my limit of pictures per entry) are the new silverware in the new silverware caddy (BORING), the pot and pan cabinet under the sink, where Kris installed shelves to maximize storage, and the overflow shelf in the basement where my lesser-used appliances and larger serving dishes are stored.

Jealous? You too can have an optimized kitchen. This is the kind of thing my husband lives for. But, I'm afraid since we're both still unemployed, it'll cost ya :)