Unpacking and Our Kitchen Cabinets {Part 1}

Last week I finally got around to trying to unpack our Kitchen. I hit a snag...

All 4 of these cabinets are basically useless, they are all connected and under the sink. I am not very happy about this since we don't have that much storage in our kitchen in the first place. That left me with 7 (2 of which are veryvery small and 1 that is pretty unusable on a everyday scale.) cabinets and 4 drawers. I have no pantry or even really a closet I can turn into one. So I am going to have to get creative while we are living in this house. We are renting so adding things really isn't an option no matter how awesome our landlord is about things, we wouldn't have the money too anyway.

First things first though I needed to clean the cabinets before I put anything in them since no one had lived here in almost a year. I ripped out all the gross non slip stuff they had in the cabinets when we moved in and scrubbed like I have never done in my life... well that is kinda a lie if you knew what our home in Japan was like. But that is a story for another time. Anyway, the stuff that was in there was sticky and grossly discolored. Way beyond saving.

I would have loved to put down contact paper but I couldn't find anything I liked so grip bottom easy line became my best friend. I had 3 best friends during this journey, to 2 you see above and my mom's Shark Steamer that we bought her for this past Mother's Day. She let me borrow it the week after we moved in when I told her the house really needed cleaned. She only used it twice so far anyway and those 2 times it was really me using it to help her clean.
Simple Green is really a gift from heaven. I use this stuff to clean EVERYTHING. It is amazing and if I ever had to go without it I would probably cry. We have had Simple Green in my house as long as I can remember. I used it to clean our cats litter box, then our hamsters cages, and even our rabbits cage and litter box when I was younger. It was used to clean just about everything. When I move to Japan with the hubby and we had our own place I used it to clean floors, cabinets, dog cage, and most of all our Ferrets cage. It smells amazing and takes animal odor down so well. I even use it in our pets laundry if I run out of Arm & Hammer Detergent and Oxi Clean. (Which I must note is on sale at Walgreens for buy one get one free this week! The Arm & Hammer that is,) I swear by those 2 to get the stinky pet smell out of bedding, blankets, and toys. But I digress...

After I removed the ekk and scrubbed down everything I took the steamer to it for one last punch. It took the smell of old out of the cabinets and made it smell like fresh wood! Oh I can't wait to buy my own soon! After everything dried I laid the liner... then hit a snag. I didn't have enough to finish the one main cabinet and the 2 smaller ones. So my kitchen looks like this..

For almost 4 days it looked like that. I still haven't gotten around to the store to pick up more but the narrow cabinet by the window was finished and I put most things away in there and the drawers. I made the decision that we are not going to unpack our old dishes since I bought that brown set at Ikea. We don't have the room and I have wanted new ones for awhile. We might even sell one of the old set, still deciding.

I have a temporary pantry too! My old armor that I used and planed on using for a linen closet has a new job for now. Happily it fits perfectly in the hallway and covers up a nasty patch job on the wall.

I can't wait to re-organize this soon too...

Until later!

- Brit