The Old Cabinet Switcheroo

 You might remember awhile back that I switched things around in my cabinet to allow room for some cookbooks.  Well, that turned out to be a bad idea, given the weight of the books, plus the plates and bowls (they were on the bottom shelf, but I didn't think to take a picture before I removed them.)  See how that second shelf is bowing?

The cabinet is also pulling away from the wall.  I noticed it the night we got home to a painted house.

It's worse on the other side.  Not sure whether this is just from me packing too much weight into the cabinet, or whether one of the painters also leaned on it, but it's pretty bad.  I was worried that if I left that much weight up there the whole thing would come crashing down.  I haven't figured out how it is attached yet, so for now I had to decrease the weight drastically.

I moved everything from up there down to one of the low cabinets.  This solved a couple of problems - the weight, and the fact that it was giving my nine year old fits trying to put away the dishes in the upper cabinets he couldn't reach without a chair.

I moved a bunch of light stuff up to the top cabinet - pasta, packets of sauce mixes, and prepackaged side dishes (like suffing or rice-a-roni).

I took the time to label everything too so it will be easy to find.  I know, not many people would organize their cabinets with Huggies boxes, but that's my kind of cheap.  Eventually maybe I'll cover the boxes to be pretty and to match.  Until then, they're serving their purpose.  I was recently challenged to put everything into pull out boxes within the cabinet to keep it neater.  It's working well so far.  

*Now see what happened?  I blogged about it for all creation to see, and I'm already thinking I better cover those asap.  Boy.  Peer pressure! *wink*

It has done wonders for my leftover containers.  They're in dish tubs.  It's easy to pull out a tub a ways, grab the container I need and push it back in without worrying about what a mess the cabinet will become.  The lids are all in one, and the containers are in another.

For now I moved the cookbooks onto a section of the counter I don't use a lot.  The only other thing on that counter is a scentsy burner, which I use non-stop thanks to all the diapers I change every day.  I don't really like having the books here, but I don't hate it as much as I thought I would. I wanted completely clear counters.  But I'm not sure where else to put the books, so until I figure that out, they will have to live on the counter.  I'm seriously running out of space!