Decluttering in the Kitchen, part III

Well I did another 15 minutes in the kitchen this evening. Tackled the pile that was sitting on those two chairs that are stacked together. They are stacked like that because a too big person sat in them and rocked back and forth, breaking loose a leg on each. I haven't had time to really mess with fixing them, so there they sit. Most of what was sitting on them was bags of fertilizer, which I moved to the front entry with the other bag of fertilizer.

Then I tackled the boxes of canning jars. I had already decided to chuck the commercial spaghetti sauce jars, simply because I don't need them at all. I have plenty of new and vintage home canning jars in a variety of sizes. I may whittle that collection down a bit in the future, but for today I got rid of one box of jars.  I also rearranged the canned goods and empty jars on the storage shelves in the corner. And discovered that I still have bags of bean and pea seeds to thresh out and put away from last year.

So at least now there is more walking space around this end of the kitchen. What I am hoping is that I can eventually get this corner totally emptied so that I can move in the wood cook stove that I am buying from my sister and which is currently living in her garage. Yes, that is an electric weed eater sitting there by the chainsaw. Another thing without a home. I have no outside storage that is safe from the elements and the critters so important things have to live in the house for the time being. You can also see the ice cream freezer on the floor and the fruit press on the broken chairs, empty wine jugs on the floor and assorted other stuff.

What I really really need is an old fashioned humongous farm house kitchen with a pantry and root cellar and a summer kitchen attached. What I have is a long skinny room-9'8"x19' chopped up on this end by the door to the porch and the door to the living room, no overhead cabinets, a ceiling with holes in it that slopes from nearly 8 feet to less than 6. Many other problems with it. Really I probably just need to rip it off the house and start over again. So I dream of the day when I can have a lovely harvest kitchen with plenty of work space, room for wine making, canning, drying, cooking and baking. Cozy in the winter and cool in the summer.


I have a copy of this book and love it. I can't wait until the day I can use the plans in it to build my own Harvest Kitchen. They have some lovely simple kitchen cabinet designs that you can build yourself, some with options for simpler joins and techniques for those that are new to cabinet building or don't have a lot of fancy tools.  Also some small simple projects like an herb drying rack and cutting board to start off with. The cabinet plans are built as modules so you can start with one and add to it as you have time and money.