Kitchen Organization: Use Your Pantry for Dishes!

 I love the kitchen at Sweetwater!
It is one of the reasons that we bought the house all those years ago!

It has lots of cupboards and drawers!

The layout is pretty easy to work in!

The center island is a great workspace and buffet for entertaining!

The ceilings are high!

It is bright and cheery!

BUT....I am REALLY short!  5 foot 1 on a good day!

and when we moved to Sweetwater....the kids were short too!

(the Sweetwater Son is now taller than his 6 foot 2 Dad...but not back in the day)

(The Sweetwater Daughter grew taller than me too!)

ALAS....I am STILL short!

And the high ceilings might look nice.....but it means all the cabinets are TALL!

Even on my tippy toes....I can only reach the second shelf of any of the cupboards!

Mr. S gets really bugged when he sees me standing on a chair or even worse....climbing on the counter!  (Now that is a picture you will never get to see!)

But what's a SHORT person to do?

Yeah....I know I could stand on a stool every time I want to set the table.....

but 

That's NOT gonna happen!

My solution was to use the PANTRY for dish storage!

Look at that great big cupboard.....and even the top shelf is low enough for me to reach WITHOUT standing on my tippy toes!

 This solution allows me to indulge in my not so secret habit of buying lots of dishes!  Look at all that room.....and everything is in one central location! (well....not EVERYTHING....there are a few other cupboards that store some of the dishes that aren't used on a regular basis!

The top shelf has the wine glasses.....the everyday ones in the front....the "fancier" ones at the back.

The second shelf has water glasses....and when I pay attention...I even organize them by style...but mostly....not!  But they are all there when it is time to set the table!

Bowls and the big heavy square plates that are our current favorite dinner plates are on the next shelf.  Tucked in the back are dessert dishes and those misc. little dishes that are easy to forget you have if they are hidden away in the tall cupboards.

 The next shelf has our everyday china set.....the corn dishes....a big stack of dessert plates and my treasured artichoke plates...close at hand!

The bottom shelf carries the weight of these heavy cafe plates and large pasta bowls.  More dessert/salad plates are tucked in the back!  (told you I have a bit of a problem with "DISHES")

This solution works well for us....well....Mr. S is not terribly fond of bending down to get the stuff on the lowest shelf....but hey....it probably equals out with all the times I have to stretch up to get the stuff on the highest ones!

I do know that "back in the day"...using the pantry for dishes kept my "little short" kids from having any excuses for not setting the table or emptying the dishwasher!

Yikes....I am looking at the shelf liners in these pictures and realize that I have to get busy and find some wallpaper to cover the shelves....did you notice that they don't MATCH?

OMG....what's up with that?  Hope I can find some wallpaper at Goodwill soon! 

Ooooh.....and maybe I can find some more DISHES!!!  Shh...don't tell Mr. S!

I posted awhile ago about how to use pre-pasted wall paper for easy shelf liner....here is a link to that post if you are interested!

Have A Wonderful Weekend!

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