Kitchen Upgrades

While I got the corner in the kitchen looking a bit better back here it still looked a bit cluttered

We don't usually have so many salad dressings but we got loads for Christmas, and I wanted to make a bit more room in the cupboard to get them inside if possible. Also to tidy up the top of the cupboard as it looked ike this

I've been wanting to organise the top of the cupboard here for a while as it looked so chaotic with all the mess underneath and boxes etc on the top, so on a trip to The Range I bought glass storage jars in a few sizes.

After filling them all up with the icing sugar and flour that were on the top of the cupboard and also with the pastas and lentils that were inside it I managed to make a bit more space inside for the salad dressings and it looked more like this

I also moved the Bourbon biscuit tin to the top of the cupboard opposite to get that off the counter

So much tidier, and as they're proper storage jars with seals actually it will help the contents to keep for longer

I kept the porridge down as I use that every morning, but I don't mind it being on the counter in a nice jar rather that in the bag it came in.

I also got this for £5.99!

So here's that side of the kitchen now

Much better, and it's also easier to see what we have when it's in the jars rather than just shoved up there in their original packaging.

The jars cost £1.49 for the smallest 700ml, £2.49 for the middle sized 2100ml and £2.79 for the largest 3100ml. The large ones really hold a lot there's a whole pack of porridge in one and 3 bags of flour in the other!

In total this little upgrade cost under £20, £18.04 to be exact.

Next on the list in the kitchen is to sort out the bins, as you can see in the last picture the recycling one isn't really big enough, and the collection here seems to be a bit unreliable (anyone else living in Cheltenham find this?) so I'd like to get a dual bin or at least one the same as the silver bin, which we use for general rubbish and non recyclables, for the recycling.

Bread Bin to Spice Rack

Our kitchen is pretty new and lovely, so we aren't planning to do a lot in here other than try and keep our stuff under control and keep it looking tidy. There are less cabinets here than we had at our last house so we need to find storage solutions for a lot of things, like spices. We kept them in a cabinet at our last house but there's no room for them here since all the cabinets are full. I looked around for a while for a spice rack, but most seemed to be wall mouted ones which we can't have, and the counter top ones I did see either didn't hold enough jars to house our collection or I just didn't like them (And as it will be on the counter top I'd have to look at it every day so didn't want to settle for something I didn't like). So one corner of the kitchen looked like this for a while, the spices are all in that carrier bag.

So on the same shopping trip as when I got the ottomans in the last post I bought this:

It's meant to be a mini bread bin 11.99 from The Range (although it wouldn't fit a loaf of bread, maybe only about 4 bread rolls)

We keep the most used ones like salts, pepper, basil, mint and nutmeg on top for easy access.

Then the rest all go inside and are hidden away. The canvas behind is from HomeSense bought a few years ago now, we also have these other two, they were under a tenner each I think.

Much better, although there is still too much out on the counters for my liking so there will be more reorganising to come.

Happy Pancake Day!

 It's pancake day :) We love pancake day!

Blueberry pancakes topped with strawberries and honey, absolutely delicious!

Tom likes his pancakes topped with butter and golden syrup, I'm attempting to be good so had one blueberry pancake with strawberries and honey and another with lemon and sugar. What are you having?

Check back Thursday for a valentines day art project...