My kitchen

My bed is made, my bathroom counter is decluttered and clean, my scrapbook room is clean and organized, the magazines have been sorted and purged, I've got dinner (chicken soup) in the crock pot, there's a cake in the oven, homemade bread defrosting on the counter, and, for the first time in over two months (this is so bad):

I can see the top of my kitchen table.

Isn't that terrible? I totally outgrew what storage systems I had in place when I started taking the cake decorating classes, so as I acquired new items, nothing had a home or a place where it could possibly go. Therefore, everything just kinda started to live on the table. It completely snowballed out of control. There was stuff on the chairs even!

Finally, I decided enough was enough. I took this wire shelf that I had out on the patio and brought it inside where it could be put to good use. I love this shelf. It's NSF certified and can hold something like 300 lbs on each shelf. I got it for about $60 at Sam's Club nine years ago. The shelves are easily adjustable too. It holds all my cake stuff neatly and there's room to grow if needed.
I just added some plastic storage boxes, and some new baskets, and ta da! Neat and tidy and accessible.

You know, one of the things that really sold me on this place was the kitchen. My kitchen is huge for being an apartment kitchen. I mean, the whole apartment is only 975 square feet. I've been in bigger apartments that seriously only had a walk in closet sized galley kitchen. Who can work with that?

I also love that the dining room is in the kitchen, and not in the living room. I don't know if this is common elsewhere, but when looking at apartments, I was shocked at how many had the front entrance right in the dining area. Who decided that was a good idea? And what about the ones where it's in the living room? They even do that in houses now. I think if you're going to combine rooms, the dining room should be with the kitchen.

This is the view of the other side. Like I said, considering that it's in a smallish apartment, it's pretty roomy. Since I'm a pretty tidy cook (like I said, soup in the crockpot and a cake in the oven and it's STILL this clean) and I don't need a lot of space to spread out, it works well for me.

The two microwave ovens don't hurt either...