Upgraded Kitchen Storage

Now that I have a job, LJ and I have made the commitment to stay in this area for at least another year and continue to rent our apartment.  It doesn't hurt that it is only a five minute walk from my office and our landlords are pretty nice.  So nice that they even let us perform a few upgrades to the storage situation in the kitchen.

Below is the before photo of a weird counter space in our kitchen.  It only seems to be there to provide a little more counter space but what the kitchen really is lacking is pantry space.  As you can see we were stacking a lot of dry goods, cans, and spices in this area.

LJ and I made a trip to Ikea and picked up a couple of shelves and a few stack-able storage containers.  They made all the difference in allowing us to use what was a lot of wasted vertical space above the counters.  I did have to put a few holes in the wall to hang the shelves (which is why I needed to talk to the landlord) and used some special plastic screws that help hold things in drywall if you can screw in to a stud.

LJ loves assembling things from Ikea

You can see the shelves on the wall allowed us to move all the small containers off the counter.  We also were able to stack all the white wire racks we already had together to store heavier items.

Though we went to Ikea just to look for shelves, the real find was these clear storage containers.  Since we buy a lot of things in bulk (rice, flour, lentils, beans, pasta, oatmeal, etc) we really need a better storage system than piling the plastic bags on the counter.  These containers easily allow us to see what is inside and come with dividers so we can store multiple items in one container.

Overall we are quite happy with the upgrades.  It has made it much easier to keep the kitchen tidy and find what you are looking for when cooking.