New Little Old House

Our kitchen is pretty good-sized and we’ve made careful use of the space. However, our cupboards are still overflowing. This area is the culprit:

The upper cabinet holds some bread, but mostly booze. The base cabinet is our recycling center. These all seem like things that could be stored elsewhere, freeing up space for all of the crap atop the fridge, all of the food falling out of the other cabinets, and our big cookware like our roasting pan and wok.

(I must confess that I staged the liquor shelf before taking this picture, trying to hide the embarrassing stuff like the blue raspberry vodka behind the classier bottles. In the process I broke a margarita glass. Oops.)

Never fear—we’ve got plans. We’re searching Craigslist for a great liquor cabinet for the dining room. Our preference is for something of mid-century vintage, but the prices are a little high and the pieces sell fast. I call it the Mad Men effect. A lot of mid-century modern furniture (which Sam turned me on to) is pretty affordable but bars are not so much.

I have a very zen approach to Craigslist; the right piece will come eventually if we are just patient and watchful. Whatever we find will replace this console stereo in the dining room.

This radio (which Sam bought several years ago for about $30) looks cool but it doesn’t hold anything beyond a phone charger. The right cabinet would add just as much personality but also actually have function. We want at least some enclosed space so we don’t look like lushes (I swear we aren’t). We want to celebrate the furniture, not our blue raspberry vodka.

I was seriously tempted by this semi-rare and gorgeous Broyhill Brasilia commode table I found, but it’s just too short. I’m now pretty enamored with Brasilia line, though, so perhaps the right item will come into our home down the road.

We also both like this Ikea cabinet, but if we wanted to spend $300 we could buy a really nice vintage cabinet instead. That’s greener, more interesting, and higher quality than an Ikea option for the same price.

However, we did recently make an Ikea trip for some other purchases. We picked up a recycling station for $10 that will clear out our lower cabinet (and let us stop using paper bags). The recycling will move to the little back entry, which currently has two shoe racks lining the wall. One of the racks will move to the front porch when I finish painting that.

Somehow the to-do list keeps outpacing the done list… good thing we plan to stay here for a while!