Peacock tail feathers up close.
Peacock tail feathers up close.

Just Clean It


This post brought to you by a budget-friendly suggestion. I renovated my kitchen today. It took 3 hours. I reclaimed at least half the counter space and got rid of the most random 3 cubic feet of sh*** that was all over. It was glorious and the cost was $0 dollars.

Still the old kitchen, but with cleared off countertops.

Just clean it.

Still have kids in college? Are you down because every Instagram post is someone’s beautiful (& sponsored) home that looks like no one actually lives there? Yeah, me too. Welcome to Pleasantville.

This kitchen clean-up-reno lifted my spirits so much I baked a cake! Of course, I forgot we are out of flour. That’s because of the PANTRY MOTH INVASION OF 2022.

I’ve never lived anywhere long enough to be invaded by pests, or have to clean the fridge. We’d just move instead. After months of battling pantry moths, upgrading to lovely vintage glass containers to hold anything remotely tasty, threatening to swear off cooking altogether, and holding military moves up to a new light of appreciation, we have won. (Yeah that’s me, calling fire upon my position. I expect to see one float by any minute, just because I said they were gone…) If you ever wondered whether you should stock your pantry to prepare for the apocalypse, just don’t do it. The moths ARE the apocalypse. Don’t bring them on intentionally. You are just testing God.

In 2022, we did make one seemingly small improvement, but has turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made to improve my cooking life. We installed ghost shelves to hold the spices. Can you imagine all of these spices crammed into one abused little cabinet? This is why I am not allowed to renovate. The kitchen is so mistreated, I’d feel sorry for it.

Alphabetized for convenience!
Close up view of the ghost shelves holding rows of spices.
Ghost shelves at last!

I DO SO WANT to renovate my kitchen. However, I need to wait until the kids are done with college (at least 2 out of 3). It is a small price to pay for launching all of our little birds, don’t you think? Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of the birds will become an architect.

© copyright Mariam d’Eustachio at Simply Turquoise 2023. All rights reserved.


4 responses to “Just Clean It”

    • Basket storage is tricky. I suspended a wooden ladder from the ceiling with twine in the dining room (and in Loretta’s house too) about 10 years ago. I hang them from there with S hooks.

      Like

  1. You know, you can buy a bunch of similar containers and make it Pinterest worthy…. But then truly the whole thing would be a lie. The truth is the only balance, I think I’m going to start sending you my minimalist moments…

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

%d bloggers like this: