Kitchen

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the midlife revolution. I'm your host Megan Connor. And today we're going to be diving into another ADHD edition of the episode titled kitchen. So if you listen to my last episode tidy, you'll know that I went through a revolution when I read re Kondos book about the magical art of tidying up. And when I finished my closet, the result was so wonderful and peaceful that I decided I needed to go through my entire house. Now I did follow Marie Kondo advice, she advises that you tidy in a very specific order. And so after clothing comes books, and then papers. And believe me when I say that took me a really long time, because one of the markers of my particular ADHD is that I would have little piles of papers everywhere around the house, little collections of things, nothing in a great place. And all of these file folders of things that I either needed to do or correspondence I needed to look at or something like that. And it was kind of a mess. So it took me a really long time to go through my papers, my books were a little bit easier because I had a huge collection of children's books, I pretty much asked my kids which ones they wanted, I was able to give some of those away to them. And then I went through and I kept the ones that were sentimental to me that I want to keep around for my grandson, and hopefully, more grandkids at some point. Now I also mentioned on my tidy episode, I've spent actually a lot of time speaking about my food issues, and the origins of all of that having to do with the intersection of body shame and purity culture. And I really had some similar feelings about doing my kitchen because of my relationship to food. And also my kitchen being a place that I sort of stored a lot of things that I probably didn't need. And I knew that my cabinets, even though my kitchen is pretty small, my cabinets were full of things that I didn't use, and that were old, and that I was just hanging on to for the sake of hanging on to them. I also have a complicated relationship with my kitchen. Because it's a place that reminds me a lot of my mother. And my mother and I have had a complicated and difficult relationship for a very long time. Those of you who are listening, probably can't see, but I'm getting a little bit emotional about this. Wow, my mom in the kitchen. My mom, I think I talked to my last episode on tidy about how she restricted our food portions. And so that had a lot to do with my relationship with food. And then there just are a lot of memories in the kitchen, I remember the dishes that she used and the cookware that she used, and throughout the different houses that we lived in what the kitchen was like. And that was a really pivotal, pivotal place for me. I think also because the amount of time that I spent with my mom, a lot of it was done in the kitchen. And a lot of it was either cleaning or cooking, preparing meals, serving meals, eating meals, I just a lot of my memories of my mom and our relationship together had to took place in the kitchen. And so for that reason, it's also a place that I felt like I needed to clean everything out to get rid of all the things that I wasn't using anymore. And only keep the things that were really useful in the kitchen and also beautiful. That's something that's super important to me is the aesthetics of things, the way things look the way things rest in the cabinets together, and making my kitchen basically a more peaceful place. Now, the reason that it's emotional for me is because what I just said about the kitchen is exactly the same way that I felt about my life. Being raised in a strict Mormon household. My mom was very, very controlling about the way that we lived our lives, the people we were allowed to associate with, what clothes we were, what friends we were allowed to have, and ultimately, what kind of a person that we were allowed to become or what was acceptable to her. And I think I've talked before about sort of this, this idea of attachment and how, when you're a child, your attachment to your mother is incredibly important to your development. And we literally rely on our mothers for our survival. And so it's hardwired into us to make sure that our mothers accept us because on some level that really is our physical survival. If you look at different animals, and their relationships between the mother and the child, in the animal relationship, a lot of times mothers will abandon their children or certain species of birds will kick the weaker birds out of the nest because it's going to take resources away from the stronger bird or the one that's more likely to survive. And while yes, that's the animal kingdom and not us, there are a lot of similarities in the genetics and in what we're hardwired, our instincts are for survival. And so it's all tied together in that way. So I got the message very early on that if I wanted to be acceptable to my mother, that I needed to be a very strict Mormon child, and I needed to adhere to the teachings of the Church. And I also needed to meet her expectations of what it meant to be a woman in this system. As a result, I grew up not really knowing who I was as a human being. And not really knowing what I wanted for myself, because I tried so hard to be acceptable to my mother, that I wanted what she wanted for me, and I became who she wanted me to become. Now, it wasn't just my mother's expectations. And this is also by the way, not unique to Mormonism. It's also found throughout fundamental Christianity, but also mainstream Christianity as well. But I will say in the Mormon culture, I was very much raised to believe that my greatest role in life was going to be being a mother. And the expectation was that you find a worthy temple recommend, holder, that just means somebody who follows all of the Mormon teachings really exactly. You were supposed to find a return to missionary in order. In other words, somebody who had served a mission and had served well, and had come home, and it was a faithful member of the church, and then you're supposed to get married as soon as possible, and have a lot of children. Now when I say a lot of children, obviously, there is sort of the stereotype of the Mormon family with lots and lots of children, that sort of started to evolve a little bit in the 80s and 90s, where people were having fewer children. I don't know if fertility issues played into that. I haven't done the research on any of that. But I noticed that in the church in Connecticut, which was where I spent my middle school and high school years, that most families had four children or less, there were not very many families in our congregations that had more than four children. My mother had four children. Her mother had five children, the my dad, on my dad's side of the family, the largest family had six children. And so it wasn't necessarily an expectation to have one of these really large families with like, 10 children or whatever. But I instinctually, even from a young child wanted to be a mother, I had that caring and nurturing instinct. I babysat a lot when I was a teenager. And I really enjoyed caring for young children. And I did want to have a lot of children. I didn't necessarily want to limit the number of children that I was going to have. And when I did get married, I married somebody who was not a member of the church, first of all, and he was an only child, and my ideas about having lots of children. He was like, okay, sure, let's have lots of children. And then when our third child was born, he was like, Okay, maybe not so many. Because at that point, we had three children. And that so the youngest, obviously was an infant. The next one was two years old. And the next one was five years old. And so it was a lot, you know, three children under the age of six. And he was like, Okay, maybe not, not so many. And then we ended up having another baby two years later. And he was like, Yeah, this is probably it, we should be done. And it took me another five years, to convince him that it was okay for us to have another child. And then I was done. I felt like I was done at five. And he convinced me to have another one. And I'm grateful. I'm so grateful that I did I love especially my youngest two children are really good friends. And it's been really nice to see my children evolve in that way. I would not trade motherhood for anything in the world. My favorite phase of motherhood is right now actually, where my oldest my older children are developing their own lives, and I love to see them becoming who they are and just exploring the world and just finding happiness in so many places. It's super fulfilling for me. But I don't know that I would have had so many children and I definitely would not have had them as young. If I had had sort of a different example, away from the Mormon church, or away from the expectation I have Mormon culture and my parents.

So all of that is definitely a long discussion for another time. But just as an example, to say that when I left my parents house, in fact, when I got married, I remember thinking, I don't really know what I want for a wedding. I didn't know what colors I really wanted. I didn't really know what kind of a dress I wanted. I didn't know what food I wanted. I really didn't. I wasn't capable of making these decisions for myself. And my relationship with my mom was kind of strange at that time. And I didn't feel comfortable sitting down with her and discussing with her what what would work and what would be good for a wedding. So I started coming up with these ideas. And I remember feeling super lost because I didn't really know what I wanted. And I'll tell you something that's really ironic is that I ended up choosing the colors purple and green for my wedding. Because purple was always my favorite color. And in my mother's kitchen in San Antonio. Her wallpaper was a green and purple plaid wallpaper. Now I know you're probably thinking, wow, it's hideous, but it was the 90s you guys. So it was it actually was beautiful for its time. It's super outdated now. But it was purple and green. And my mother's favorite color is green. And I did not put this together for a super long time. Realizing that I chose my wedding colors as my favorite color and my mom's favorite color, without even talking to her without realizing that that's what I had done, or that's what I was doing. It was just an unconscious thing that happened. And I think it's really psychologically interesting that it was an intersection of me and my mom in the kitchen, all in one. And so as I started to go through my kitchen, I realized that I sort of set up my kitchen as a young person, the way that my mom did, I had the same kinds of appliances that my mom did, I had the same baking dishes that my mom did not necessarily the same brand, but definitely the same type. I listened to all of her opinions about cooking and preparing food, even though she didn't really know that much about it. And I didn't necessarily think she was an excellent cook. But she made a few things that were good and tasty. And we had dinner over at her house every single Sunday night. From the time that I was first married until probably almost 15 years later. And I almost every Sunday, not night, not every single one. So there's there is this intersection of my mom, the kitchen, the cooking, and me becoming my own person. I started to say earlier, what I did with my life is exactly the same thing that I needed to do with my kitchen, I started removing things from my life, not necessarily because they were put there by my mother, but because they were harmful to me. And I felt like they were some of them were my mother's traditions. The church was part of that the church culture was part of that, certainly, the expectations and opinions of my father wade into into that as well. But I started removing things from my life, realizing that would make me unacceptable to my mother, and more specifically to, to my parents and my family system in general. Now, this is where the ADHD part comes into it. Because one of my other ADHD symptoms is that I tend to start projects and never finish them. I also have what's called time blindness, which means that I'm really bad at estimating how long a task is going to take me. And I also tend to get involved in a task and not realize how much time has passed. And so I started this project of doing my kitchen thinking that I could get it all done in one long, Saturday. And spoiler alert, it did not happen that way. I ended up spending two days, getting my kitchen done. And while I actually think that's pretty good for what I had to do, it just was a little bit of a difficult and chaotic process. It was emotional. And I had a hard time taking the food and dealing with the food situation. So even though I said I started out saying I wasn't going to deal with the food, I ended up diving into that anyway. And what's really interesting to me too, is that I was taking my medicine, when I don't take my medicine, of course all those symptoms are worse. But I was taking my medicine that day. I still but I still have these tendencies. And the it's not that the problems go away. But when I'm taking my medicine, I just feel more focused, I feel more calm, and I'm able to control the impulse to dart from ACT ability to activity much better. However, when I get involved in a big project like this, it makes my symptoms come out a little more pronounced basically, is the way that that works. So for those of you who are watching on YouTube, you're going to see the videos of all of the decluttering that took place in my kitchen. For those of you who are just listening, I do have some narration that goes on, for sure. And you're gonna hear the process that I went through now I'm recording this portion, probably about a month and a half after I actually redid my kitchen. And so this is all hindsight, coming back. So I applied some of the same principles of decluttering, my closet that I did to decluttering my kitchen, I first decided to take everything out of all the drawers in the cabinets, I got everything out onto the countertops. And I even set up a separate table to the side where I could put things so that I could visually see all of the things that had been inside my cabinet. I also cleared off my kitchen table and I reserved that table as a place for things that I was going to donate. As I mentioned, in my tidy video about my clothes, I wanted to donate things to a meaningful cause. And so I took my kitchen items to the women's shelter, the Kendall county women's shelter, they have a thrift shop that is attached to it's not attached physically to but it's a sort of sister company. So everything that gets sold in the thrift shop, the proceeds get donated to the Kendall county women's shelter. And so I decided that's where I was going to take my kitchen items as well. All in all, after it was said and done. I made three separate trips between my closet and my kitchen to the Kendall county women's shelter drop off point. And I have a smallish SUV. It's a five seater SUV with a really big cargo area. And the reason I made three trips is because I filled it up three times. That's how much stuff that I had that needed to be donated. So I will go ahead and take you through the process of the kitchen and realizing that for me, this was not just decluttering my kitchen, it was a metaphor for my relationship with my mom and the intersection of my food issues and confronting those fears of throwing away things. Because the holding on to things just in case of that scarcity mentality that I talked about in the tidy episode too. If you haven't seen that yet, or listen to it, you might want to go back and review it. And listen to that one first. Because it really this really is kind of a part two to that episode. And the explanation of how to overcome scarcity mentality, I think is really important too, because those of us who hold on to things, for the just in case reasons. That's a fear based scarcity, mentality based behavior. And it's something that I think is important for all of us to think about. So once we go through the entire process of decluttering, the kitchen, I'm going to come back at the end with a little bit more hindsight about the whole process and how I felt about it. And I hope that it helps you to think about confronting some of the patterns in your life that are there that you didn't maybe think about that just got ingrained in you whether it was by a mentor, a teacher, a friend, a parent, a colleague, a co worker, sometimes we have these unconscious patterns that we develop. And it's important to take a step back and see if those things are still serving us or not. Or if there's something that we need to change. And as always, my encouragement is going to be to just change one small thing, don't feel like you have to dive in and be overwhelmed by this huge process that's going to take hours and hours. Just changing one small habit or the way that you approach one task can have a revolutionary effect on your life and hopefully make things better and more peaceful for you.

Okay, I'm gonna take you through a little bit of before pictures. This was the before my kitchen counter, I have a little corner where everything sort of gets shoved and stored. And all of my liquor bottles are kind of on the top on it on a shelf that's just above my counter, and didn't really have a place to store them or think about them really because alcohol was not a part of my life. Obviously when I was Mormon, this is my bottom cabinet. It's an L shaped cabinet and everything that came out of this cabinet. I had to bring out a six foot long table and my kitchen table to get everything out of here and inhabit where I could see everything. And then this is a little cart a little island carts that I have in my kitchen and this is where I stored all of my pots and pans basically bowls in the you can see a strainer on there. Here we have a drawer that is full of lids not organized at all, I have no idea exactly what's in there. So it's a really bad solution for that. This is my random utensil drawer, you can see a garlic crusher, that the tag hasn't even been removed, because I obviously haven't used it. It's a mess in there, I can't find anything in there. This is my measuring cup drawer, it's a little bit organized a tiny bit, but it's still there's still some random stuff in there that I definitely don't need that needs to come out. This is what my countertop looks like to the right of my stove. I've got my paper towel holder and a huge bucket of utensils just sitting out there, which looks super cluttery. And then a few things that I actually just need to get rid of, but they've been sitting on my counter forever. That's kind of how ADHD works. And on the other side of the stove, I've got my olive oil, avocado oil, some tortillas, I'm probably never going to eat half a loaf of bread that I'm never going to eat and, and my Latin and my knives live there as well. And then over here, I started a collection of magnets. When I got divorced, I started traveling and doing some fun things. And I wanted to have little memories from all the places that I visited. And so I have this lovely little magnet connect collection. But it's definitely time for me to find a different solution because it looks really cluttered and not peaceful. I also just don't like having appliances out on my counter. So I'm hopeful that I'll find enough cabinet space to be able to put those away. And then here's my cutting boards. As you can see, it's a random collection of cutting boards and wire cooling racks and things not organized at all. And definitely I have more cutting boards than I need. This is my undersink problem, which I have still not addressed. There's a lot to unpack there. That's a project for another day. This is my random junk drawer, I've got a couple of little handheld appliances in there a bunch of batteries, random cords, a lighter a flashlight, like it just needs to be cold, I need to dump everything out of there, get rid of all the stuff I don't use and find a better place to store everything so that everything actually has a place to live. Okay, I know this all looks just a little bit crazy. But I promise there's a method to my madness. So I want to take you through things just a little bit. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and flip this around for you. So you can see I have organized things by category. And the reason I've done it this way is because I want to make sure that when I go to buy the things that I need for storage solutions for the kitchen, I want to understand exactly what it is that I need. Okay, so So over here we have all of our drinking vessels, cups, mugs, and also I took out all of the plastic storage containers out of my cabinets, they were sitting up there in the top. Now I know I'm going to keep my plates and my bowls. And so I'm not going to take those out because I know I'm keeping all of that stuff, but I wanted to go through all of the drinking vessels and get them out of this lower cabinet. Okay, the next thing that I did is I emptied all of these top cabinets and these two cabinets that had a lot of my vinegars and oils, and I got those all in one place. And then over here, just ignore the dishes in the background over here, I put all the utensils and measuring cups, and you know anything that I'm going to use as a utensil. I also emptied everything out of my pantry that I knew I wasn't going to keep. So I have just a few things left in here. And I have one other cabinet over there that's got lots of pantry stuff in it. So I'm gonna try to consolidate that to one place. The next thing that I did was I got all of my small appliances in the same place so that I can see everything and decide what it is that I want to keep and where I want to put it where it's going to be used the most efficiently. Then over here, I have all of my reps, plastic wraps, paper towels, baggies, napkins, plastic where these are all the candles that used to be down in the other drawer. And then over here I have some vases and other random glassware. Finally, you can see on here, this is all my fake where my sheet pans, my cutting boards. I do have some glass storage containers over here that I'm going to need to back to the other place. Some serving were a little bit more vague were some of those silicone mats. These are disposable headquater that I used to like make treats for friends and take them. These are some things that I don't use very often so I'm trying to decide if I'm going to keep them it's a small square baking dish my cheesecake springform pans, a griddle that I haven't used in forever, a little muffin tin and then these containers are for grilling vegetables on the grill which I don't usually do. So I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep those yet. And then finally over here we have all the things that I have decided to donate these ice cream cups that I've never used literally since I moved in five years ago. A bunch of random drink Wherever that I started I didn't need and the serving dishes actually came with a lazy Susan. And it was super cool because we put them all together, they make a circle around the Lazy Susan. And then there's a bowl that goes in the middle that you could use, like for dips and stuff like that. But Lazy Susan is gone and one of the bowls is broken. So those are getting donated this cabinet that has mostly canned goods and the Cabinet next to it, which has mostly medicines and supplements that needs to go through. But I'm not doing that today, either this cabinet that also has miscellaneous baking and pantry and tea and all kinds of other stuff. I'm not going to organize that today. And finally my spice cabinet, which is very full and obviously need some better solutions. I'm not going to organise that today either. And even though I did throw away some things for my pantry, this is not a job I'm going to tackle today food is for another day. I also have this cart over here that I haven't addressed yet but and a dog I haven't addressed yet. But I can see everything that's on the cart. And so when I start to put things back into cabinets is what I'm going to call this, these items and decide what I'm going to keep and what I'm not going to keep. So this cabinet next to the sink that's really perfect for vertical storage has this random shelf in the middle of it that's blocking most of the way. So I'm going to hammer that shelf out and I'm going to find a sliding solution for this. So for baking dishes, I really had to resist the temptation to keep things just for size. This is my only square baking dish. This one is a unique least small size. That's melody, this one has handles it's kind of like it has pockets but all of these are going to the women's shelter. And the reason for that is this look how peaceful that looks with these three beautiful baking dishes. Plenty of sizes, and I really have to resist the temptation to squeeze this one in there because while I could use one this size for marinating and I like the aesthetic of just a plain glass dish, it does not quite nest well. And that does not feel peaceful to me. So I am going to gift this to a friend who can use it for marinating for small appliances. I called out this juicer that I delivered literally never used this collapsible colander that I've literally ever used. And this attachment food processor attachment when on top of a blender that's broken now, this is broken, but I was storing it for a long time for who knows why. So I'm left with my toaster, my instant pot, the airfryer attachment for my instant pot making blender even though it is a little clunky and not my favorite. I do use it quite a lot. And I've just decided that I'm going to upgrade it when I can. This KitchenAid mixer literally belonged to my grandmother and it's not perfect, but it runs really really well. I've only used this a couple of times, but man it's so fun to have a kitchen torch, Mike Creo maker, and of course my waffle maker because I love waffles. And I also love popcorn and that's my air popper. Again, some of these things are not my absolute favorite, but if it's something that I use all the time, I'm going to just keep it and I'm going to put on my list and when people ask me for gifts I never know what to say. So now I have a few things on my list that I can say like this is something I actually need or I need a new one or I need one that functions better for Tupperware I'm plastic containers I just really don't like to feel a plastic containers I feel like they never really get all the way clean. So I've decided to upgrade to only glass containers and these Pyrex have all the lids they're all matching I have a couple different sizes of these glass containers. And I recently decided to upgrade to this Zwilling vacuum sealing kit. It is super amazing. I'm so excited to use it. And I'm not sponsored by Zwilling, but man I sure would like to meet these guys are amazing. This awesome vacuum seal food storage set from Zwilling comes with 16 pieces it comes with a little vacuum pump, which you use you put it on top of the lid like that

it pumps out the air and then the seal is airtight. It also comes with a wind sealer which works the same way. And then it comes with three different or four different glass vacuum sealed containers with the lids that are attached and then it comes with 10 Assorted vacuum bags. These are awesome for marinating it cuts down the marinating time by a ton and it also you can store bread products in it without them getting stale chips fruit just about anything. So I'm so excited to incorporate this into my new kitchen. In going through my utensils, I found it really helpful to lay everything out so that I could see what duplicates that I had. So I don't need more than one set of measuring cups. I don't need more than one vegetable peeler. I don't need more than one corkscrew. I don't really need more than one whisk because the smaller whisk. I guess I could use a smaller whisk. Yes, I realized I haven't even taken the tag off this garlic press but I just bought it last week. And then look I have literally to have the exact same cheese knife. So clearly that's an easy The way to eliminate duplicates and decide what to keep. I also found it kind of hilarious to look at the collection of specialists and scrapers and spoons that I have that are all basically the same. So now I get to decide which ones bring me joy. So this is just if you really need help deciding what to choose and how to eliminate things. Okay, so this is my only slotted spoon, so I'm gonna keep it, I don't need a duplicate spoon of this size. So I can get rid of this one, these spatulas all basically kind of do the same thing. So I'm gonna pick out the ones that are single use. This one's really handy because it has like a spoon, sort of scrape. And then this side is not a spatula, it's like a paddle so I can use it to spread things. And then if I'm going back through over here, either use this one all the time classic, these spatulas basically all do the same thing. They're all flat headed spatulas. And I don't need three than the same size. This one I like the best, but it has a small crack on the back. So I'm gonna go on with keeping this one. And these are two different size specialists for different tasks. So they're unique. And this guy is pretty unique because of its shape. And what I use it for. This one is pretty big. And these are both about the same size. So if I'm thinking about what I'm going to use it for I already have a paddle spatula that's just like this is just a different size. And so I can decide if the larger one or the smaller one is the one I'm going to use most often. I do like the cup shape of this one and the size of it. And since I'm using the big one on that, I'm going to keep the small one on that and get rid of this one. And then I just have to decide if this one is gonna be basically the same as this other one that's shaped similarly, but they really are different shapes, they've got different functions and so I'm gonna go ahead and keep so this is what I ended up with and you can let me know in the comments if you think I still kept too many. Okay, so after calling and sorting everything, this is what I ended up with. stockpot those two skillets I use for craps all the time, I do need to get a better cheese grater but that will come some measuring cups me springform pans that good colander so a metal bowl, cake plate, my convex, so beautiful serving bowls, platters, and my pizza stone, making dishes and silicone Pat's may pie dishes. And this makes me feel so peaceful, this little collection here. And then my cutting boards and my strainer, and my cooling racks. It just feels so much more peaceful to me than all of those chaotic things. So I'm really enjoying this. And this is everything that I'm donating to the women's shelter. So far. It is a lot that I have gotten out of my kitchen and it feels great. In deciding where to place my small appliances, I decided to order them from right to left in the order of least used to most used with the most use, of course, being my credo that I use every day. And I never use this but I keep it around for my daughter. Okay, so one issue that I'm having is that my kitchen is weird in lots of ways. There are some things that are only going to have one solution to and what makes the most sense to me is to have I don't like my appliances to be on the countertop I like to have the aesthetic be very clean and neat. And so I what makes the most sense to me is to have the airfryer stored in a cabinet underneath the counter where I'm going to take it out of that cabinet and put it right onto the countertop right there and where I can plug it in. Well, unfortunately, my cabinets are so tiny, that that solution just is not going to work. The other thing is that I really love to use heavy duty aluminum foil and I use it a lot almost every time I cook and again not sponsored by Kirklands. But hey, I wouldn't say no. I love this heavy duty service foil because it fits my sheet pans. And what I use it for is as a liner on my sheet him so that there's less cleanup afterwards. And I know that kind of seems wasteful, but it makes my life really peaceful. And this is literally the only place in my kitchen that this makes sense because the role is so big that the only place it's going to be easily accessible is right here on my cart. One thing I already have in place that does make sense is that my sink is right next to my dishwasher. And my dishwasher is right below the cabinet where I keep all my plates and cups. I do think I'm going to move some of my glasses over here but it doesn't make sense to do food prep here because this is the most efficient solution for my dishes. It also makes the most sense for me to use this area as the cooking area and the landing place for hot dishes. And for me to use the biggest face in the kitchen for the food prep area. So everything in these cabinets and in these drawers is going to be for food prep only. Again not sponsored by cRIO bru but I definitely wouldn't say now I drink this every single Today, so I'm super excited to put it in this lovely glass container made visor willing and vacuum seal it up so that it will be fresh for me every single time that I use it. Also, this vacuum sealer works a lot better if you take the lid off the bottom. Okay, it's the moment of truth, it's time to take you through some of these after photos. Now, I realized that my house is old, so my cabinets are old. So there's definitely some work that I need to do on those but so ignore the paint and all of that stuff. But this is my sheet pan solution. And here's what that huge cabinet ended up looking like. And it just looks really peaceful. To me, I've got everything in a place where it makes sense. I kept my my baking dishes together, I kept my food prep bowls together, I kept all of my measuring things together. And then I have a little container for my hand blender and all the attachments that go with it. This is my cutting board solution, you can see my toaster fit on that super weird shelf that stuck back there, I actually ended up going back through and getting rid of one more of those cutting boards because I just didn't need it. I like having size options, but I didn't need so many of them. This is what my dish cabinet ended up looking like with the glass storage up there on the top, as well as large drinking vessels that I don't use often up there on the top and then second shelf for everyday glasses and my glass storage where that I love and all of my plates, bowls and small prep bowls down there on the bottom. Because those are the ones I use the most.

I ended up coming up with a new solution for my Creo situation. I did clean this up a little bit afterwards. But it made so much sense to me to keep my Creo maker on the counter. And then right above that to have all of the vessels that I use to take my Creo to go when I go to work to have the actual Creo right there in the cabinet. And then cups and mugs on top of that. And at the very top, again, not sponsored by Stanley. But when I travel or when I camp, I take that little Stanley pour over with me so that I can make my Creo when I'm out and about traveling around. This is what my cart solution ended up looking like. Now I will have to say since I've done this, I did end up taking all of those plastic containers and the kitchen bags and the ziplock bags and all that stuff ended up coming off the cart and going somewhere where I don't see it all the time. Because all of these colors and sizes and shapes looked really chaotic to me. So I ended up finding a better solution for that, which I will show you at another time. And then finally, I went ahead and organized my cart, so that I could have a little bar cart. And I really love this solution where I've got all of my drink were hanging just above the bar cart. And all of my bottles of different flavors of alcohol are they're organized on the top, sort of by size and shape. And I really love that solution. Now, I wish that I could say that I stopped there and just went ahead and moved on with my life for the rest of the day. But unfortunately, my impulse control was not under control. And I decided to go ahead and do the food on the same day, which was a huge mistake. I thought, oh, there's not that much of it, I can just take care of it and tackle it. Well, that just was not the case, it's going to be another episode where I go through the food situation. And I take you through sort of the frustrating day that I had, because what I thought I was going to do was take all the food out of the pantry and get it onto a shelf and then go to IKEA and get all of the storage solutions that I needed for my kitchen, and then put everything back together. And I thought I was going to accomplish that in one day. And spoiler alert, I didn't. In the beginning of the video, I don't know if you can see, but it's around noon, when I get everything out of the cabinets in the kitchen. And I think I finished putting everything back by around 330 or so. And for some reason I thought I had enough time to take the food out of the cabinets, go to Ikea, buy everything that I needed and bring it back and put it away that day. I don't know what I was thinking it was. It's just that crazy time blindness where you just I just don't estimate well. So food is going to be a completely different episode. But I hope that what you got out of today was sort of understanding the reasons why we do the things that we do. Sometimes it's not what we think at all. I had no idea for the longest time that my kitchen was the way it was because of my relationship with my mother. I had no idea. I hope also that you will take away maybe some ideas about how you can make your life simpler, not only in the kitchen, but just in general and how changing one small thing can create a revolution Your Life. Now when I go into my kitchen, it's clean, it's tidy, I enjoy preparing food there because everything is in its place in a place that's efficient. And I really enjoy it. Now I will say, one caveat of that is that my children completely did not know what to do, because they don't know where anything is in the kitchen. I had to give them a tour, to kind of explain to them why I did everything the way that I did. And if you've got little helpers in your house, certainly you can involve them in this process. I think it's super fun for kids to have some say about the solutions that you come up with. It's something that you can do together as a family. So I hope that what you take away from this, again, is just rethinking everything in your life, one thing at a time, and just figuring out if it really works or if it's something that you can change just a little bit to make things more peaceful, and to give yourself back some of your most valuable commodity which is time. Again, thanks for watching and listening. I hope that you will like this episode and share it with your friends. And please come and visit my YouTube channel for more episodes and I will see you soon