A Cabinet Secret
Feeling the need to create a little order out of chaos? Me, too.
The cafe curtain trend may be a thing of the past, but I’m super grateful that most homewares stores continue to carry hardware for them. What in the heck do cafe curtains have to do with cabinet organization? Read on.
The hot mess above shows the state of my lid storage for two and a half years after moving into Serenity. Honestly, it didn’t really bother me. That’s one advantage of being in the 2nd percentile for trait conscientiousness (orderliness and industriousness): disorder rarely disturbs me. However, my Bear is substantially more conscientious than I am and every time he would help me by getting a pan out of the cabinet, all of the lids in his way made him nuts. There are enough stressors on any marriage, so to alleviate his frustration, I got to brainstorming a solution. Enter the cafe curtain rod.
This unassuming piece of window treatment hardware provided a perfect (and inexpensive!) solution to our organizational woes. And it was so simple. A little finagling was required to separate the inner rod from the outer rod and cut each one to the right length, then I just used the included brackets (plus one extra set) and the shortest screws I could find in our loose screw box to install them.
True, I couldn’t fit all of the lids on the door, but there is no longer an avalanche of glass and metal every time one of us reaches for a pan. It’s ridiculous how many times I opened that cabinet in the weeks following this tiny upgrade. I have no idea why it’s so gratifying to see those lids perched tidily and snugly between the bars and the door. Oh, and the cabinet isn’t so bad any more, either.
I’d love to replace the base cabinets with deep pull out drawers, but until that’s a possibility, I’m really happy with this interim solution. And it’s just one more example of how something that seems to have outlived it’s usefulness can be given a new purpose with just a little imagination.