Cabinet makeover: a porcelain-induced cleaning frenzy

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. Those are plain old (well, not literally old) Cheerios in the above photo. And no, I did not make them myself. I did, however, eat them for breakfast this morning.

And while we’re talking breakfast, here’s a shot of Jared’s morning nourishment. Mmm, mmm, sourdough.

Now normally I’d say our chosen breakfasts indicate that this was a no-frills kind of morning, but don’t let our bland-ish meals fool; this is a very special occasion. Aside from the visual tastiness that is an o-shaped breakfast, did you notice any other noteworthy object in the images above? Anything that might be helping to make the wheaty goodness look even more appealing?

We got our new dishes this weekend! Woo hooooo (Jared keeps insisting I upload audio to accompany such posts so you can hear in my squeals of happiness)! We ended up going with the Pottery Barn White set (option No. 2, for those who read my decision-making woes of yore), and so far we’re pretty happy with the choice. The Cheerios were my first go with the cereal bowls, and I’d say it was quite a success (no milk spillage or cereal sloshing to report).

So we brought our bundles of porcelain joy to their new home this weekend, but before we could nestle them comfortably into their cozy cabinet, we had to clear out a few years’ worth of clutter that had accumulated in the space. Here’s what we were working with before:

Jared (a.k.a. the saver of all boxes) pulled the boxes for our old set of dishes out of the storage closet, so it was pretty easy to get those all packed away and ready to go. But we still had a mountain of stuff (much of which I hadn’t seen in at least a year) to sort through, so I established a few simple guidelines to make the process quick and easy:

Keep if:
• We’ve used it in the past six months and plan to use it again.
• We don’t have another one like it (meaning it isn’t being replaced by something new).
• We have an unexplainable attachment to it (some things you just can’t let go).

Donate to Goodwill if:
• It hasn’t been used in the past six months and will not be used in the near future.
• It’s been replaced (this does make me feel a little sorry for it).
• We have way too many of them (plastic cups, Tupperware, etc.)

Toss/recycle if:
• It’s rickety, raggedy and looks like its time has come.
• It’s broken.
• It’s lost its match (lids without containers, containers without lids).

After all the sorting and a bit of rearranging, here’s what we’re working with now:

Pretty groovy, huh? It’s amazing what a bit of elbow grease (in the form of organization and Clorox) can do to a cabinet. Consider this our jump on spring-cleaning. Who wants to stay inside to clean during springtime anyway?

XO,
Katrina