Random Kitchen Thoughts

This is my kitchen.



For those of you who have seen my kitchen on any day other than a special occasion, you know that my kitchen NEVER looks like this. See that major structure there that some would call an island? I call it a junk collector. It took me about an hour to clear it off tonight.

Here is a partial list of what I had to find a new home for:

1. Half of a toy dinosaur egg and the dinosaur that recently hatched and other random toys.

2. About 264 pieces of mail.

3. About 46 catalogs and magazines.

4. 126 pieces of schoolwork, notices, calendars, etc.

5. 6 glasses, 3 plastic cups, 5 empty snack food wrappers.

6. Approx. $7.55 in change in 5 different piles.

7. A tire gauge, random bolts, unidentified parts to a transmission?

I should have taken a "before" picture. One thing that I can guarantee is that all of the above items will collect here again within 24 hours. Which brings me to my most recent idea to solve this problem. Here it is. Ready?

I want to redo my countertop in some sort of metal. Stainless steel won't work for reasons I will soon describe. I want the countertop to be sloping at about a 30-45 degree angle. This way things that don't belong will slide right off. Things that do belong like cutting boards, bowls, utensils will all need to be magnetized so that they will NOT slide off. So stainless won't work because magnets won't stick to it. I'm not sure how to keep the actual food from sliding off, still trying to work out the bugs of my plan.

Here is another idea I'm kicking around that is slightly more feasible.

It seems like I spend 25% of my life loading or unloading the dishwasher. It is a never ending cycle: sink -> dishwasher -> cabinet -> sink -> dishwasher -> cabinet. My idea is to have TWO dishwashers. One for the clean dishes, one for the dirty and use only enough dishes/glasses/silverware to fit in a dishwasher. This eliminates the whole cabinet step. Dishes will just go back and forth between the dishwashers. The cabinet space I will lose with the 2nd dishwasher, I will gain by not having to store dishes/glasses in a cabinet. I honestly think I might do this. I'm going to experiment by trying to live on a dishwasher full of dishes/glasses first, to see if we can do it.

These are my random kitchen thoughts for the day. Gotta go, a pile of stuff was just thrown on the counter by my husband who just walked in the door and there are dishes in the sink.