Organizing Cookware

I am so lucky that our house has two pantries!  One for food and a smaller one that I use to store all of my cookware (you can see how I organize my food pantry here).  I spent many years battling lower cabinets and trying to fit everything in them just right.  And then when I wanted to get something out, it was a whole new battle!  I am so grateful for this space in my house! 

Now I will say that this space is definitely in need of some TLC....I guess the previous owners decided to add the top shelf at a later time and didn't match it up to the other shelves.  There are nail holes, bad dry wall spots, and a whole lot of painting that needs to be done!  I wrestled with whether or not to share this with you before I got all of those things repaired or not, but what the heck, here it goes (just don't look too closely!)

 Here's a look at each shelf:

Right now I have 2 different sets of cookware, and yes, it drives me crazy that they don't all match!  But they have to work for now.  I dream of the day when I will open this pantry and everything will match :)

I must say that two of my favorite organizers ever are in this pantry.  The skillet and lid holders are amazing!!  You NEED them if you don't already have them :)  You can find them almost anywhere and they are usually only a few dollars, but make such a HUGE difference!

Here's another look at the whole thing.  The right side is just where I hang aprons.

So there you have it.  I absolutely love having this pantry and can never have another house without one!  Do you have a good spot to keep all of your cookware, or have you found a good solution for those dreaded lower cabinets?! I would love to see how you keep everything organized! Thanks for stopping by today!

-Emily 

Stand Mixer Milk Shakes

This past weekend I was let in on a little secret that will change my life forever-milk shakes made in the stand mixer!  It might sound crazy, but this is seriously exciting to me!  Making milk shakes for a family of 6 takes a long time when you have to do each one by hand.  We love shakes, so finding out that I can make an entire batch in one swoop is fantastic!  So, thank you to my friend Jana who has introduced me to this life changing process ;)

All you need is ice cream, milk, and whatever you want to add to it (that night we made some with chocolate chip ice cream and melted peanut butter mixed together-YUMMY!!!)

Here's how we made just a basic chocolate shake:

We put a half gallon of vanilla ice cream in the mixer with the wire whip attachment and slowly let that begin to mix.

 Then we added in 2 cups of milk and let it continue mixing.

 We just drizzled in the chocolate until we had it to the flavor (actually went more by the color) that we wanted it. 

And that's it! So good and so easy!  I can't wait to make them again and experiment with different flavors! 

Enjoy!

-Emily

Spring Cleaning-Paper Clutter Update

Happy Sunday!  We are back for another round of Spring Cleaning talk!  We have a gorgeous Spring day here in the midwest, so it seemed like a great day for another cleaning post!  (But a quick one since I'm itching to get out into the warm sunshine with my kiddos!)

A while back I shared with you my method for keeping up with paper clutter.  You can see that post here.  In that post I mentioned that I had high hopes for a wall filing system to install for my kids' school papers.  Unfortunately, when I took the filers out of the box, I realized that because my Command Center is behind the door to the garage that every time the door opened it would smash into it...being plastic I knew they wouldn't last long that way.  So very sad :( 

But this week I cleaned out my desk drawers and came across this wire mesh filing system that we used in our old house.  We had a great spot for it there, but not so much in our new house.  I stuck it in the filing drawer in my desk but it never fit well.  So I reconfigured that drawer without the filer.  Then I had a great idea to try it on my kitchen shelves that were continuing to have organizational 'issues' (aka:  too. much. paper. in. our. house.)

Here's what my shelves are looking like these days:

The top shelf has my new organizer.  The middle holds a charging station for cell phones, iPods, & iPads, and the bottom are our 'his & hers' baskets for dropping sun glasses, my husband's wallet, etc.

So here's a closer look at the organizer:

The back section holds my notebook with all my ongoing lists of house and organization projects and my cleaning schedule (you can see that post here.)  I usually pull my cleaning list out and set it on the shelf to look at but I can also tuck it away now when I'm done for the day or people are coming over.  The middle section is "needs attention."  This is my holding area for school papers or other forms that need filling out (book orders, field trip forms, etc).  The front is for mail that comes while my husband is at work for him to look through when he gets home.  And finally, the bottom is a drawer that we can throw receipts in.  My husband was asking for some place that we can put receipts for things that we are trying, checking sizes, or waiting to make sure work properly (we are in the middle of several house projects so this happens frequently around here) so this will be perfect!

YAY!  SO MUCH BETTER!  I can already tell that this system is going to work better and am so excited to put it to use!

I hope your Spring Cleaning is off to a great start! 

-Emily