UYL: The Evening Edition

Kitchen and Dining Room

The kitchen is such a huge project that I may or may not finish it today.

The first thing Dolan wants you to do, is look.

What do you see whenever you walk in?

Me? Usually chaos. Dishes on the counter, the table covered in who knows what, every day. The stove is usually piled with last night's pots and pans. The floor, well, let's just say you wouldn't even try the ten second rule--or even the five second rule.

She lays out three criteria for a kitchen worthy of being the "heart" of a home.

It needs to (she writes):

1. be safe and sanitary
2. have hands-free access to trash can
3. be a place where you enjoy spending time

There are many things which need doing to meet the above conditions.

• I need to replace our filtered water faucet with the new one. That will keep water from leaking all over the counter top.

• the knives need to be taken somewhere and sharpened (as Dolan suggests.)

• I need to take the trash can to the car wash and give it a good wash. (Another brilliant suggestion from Dolan--if only my husband will let me do it.)

• I also need to investigate why the lid doesn't seem to want to go up all the way when I stand on the foot pedal.

• I also need to do a bit of painting and sanding in here. The table needs a sanding, the chairs a paint job. As well, the cabinets need to be re-painted. The last time I did them was the summer of 2000 during the nesting urge while I was pregnant with my daughter.

Tools of the trade:

All your pots and pans, baking dishes, dinnerware, glasses, etc., are to be taken out, sorted, grouped, and the excess disposed of. Here, I do need to look through and get rid of any left over containers which are impaired--or unpaired (especially lids!). The baking pans stored in the drawer beneath the over could do with a look-see, too.


Clearing out the pantry and refrigerator:

Well, we just got back from vacation, so the fridge is in good shape. But the pantry? I'll have a look.

Cookbooks and Recipes

Whew. I'm good to go with this one. I have a couple of shelves for cookbooks--and I have set up my own home cookbook--two, in fact. One for baking and one for meals. They work well, especially with my home made over sized dividers.


Meal Planning and Elimination Mealtime Stress

Meal planning is covered. Not only have I got the menu planning thing down for the month, but checking what produce I need weekly is working out well, too. That said, I could get rid of the redundancies in the Master Shopping List and the Pantry Inventory List. I could also organize both lists by aisles in the store.

We'll see.