Organizing Revolution Week 2: Kitchen

Ah, the kitchen.  We meet again.  Ha.  My kitchen and I have always had a love/hate relationship.  You see, my house is a mere 764 square feet upstairs so the kitchen is teeny-tiny.  Even though I complain all the time how little it is, I really honestly don’t mind.  The thing is, there’s really only enough room for one person to be using the kitchen at a time (which I LOVE).  That being said, with five of us in the family (not including the dogs), there’s always more than one person in the kitchen (which can be quite irksome at times).  Oh, and the most annoying thing about my kitchen – it’s always cluttered!!

Whether it’s papers or miscellaneous whatever, there’s always something on my countertops and there’s literally no vacancies inside the cabinets.  Let’s just say the cabinet space is limited (even more so since I gave up an entire large cabinet and drawer so my husband could install a dishwasher for me – I am definitely not complaining about losing that cabinet & drawer considering how much I love my dishwasher!).  Limited cabinet space equals even more limited countertop space.  Case-in-point – what you see here is the only countertop space that I have.  Told you it was little.

Oh, and speaking of clutter, check out the top of my refrigerator.  I swear there is no help for me!  Somehow, junk always manages to find its way to the top of my fridge.  Mostly it’s to keep stuff away from the kids, but it’s also kind of just a quick stow-away spot.

Onto my oven.  In the almost 8 years that we’ve lived here, I think my oven has been cleaned once (and that was with the super stinky self-cleaning mode).  So embarrassing!  I found a recipe for an easy homemade oven cleaner and thought I’d put that to the test.  Around 8 p.m. on Tuesday evening, as the kids were eating their bedtime snack, I found the ammonia and went to work. 

Then, this morning after walking my kindergartener to school (in our brisk 16 degree weather), I came home and got to work scrubbing the oven.  I’m not quite sure how long it took, but I do know that it required plenty of scrubbing.  My 3-year old even thought she had to help.  I wasn’t too excited about that since we were breathing in the ammonia fumes as we worked, but she insisted.  After scrubbing with the diluted ammonia/dish soap solution, my oven still needed some extra scrubbing as there were still charred spots on the oven.  So, we liberally sprinkled baking soda over the entire bottom of the oven.  I then used the ammonia/soap solution to make a paste and scrubbed some more.  When we were done with that, I took a dry rag and wiped it out, only to find that it looked chalky.  We found our vinegar/water spray bottle and sprayed that all over the oven.  After wiping the vinegar away, look at how incredibly spic and span my oven looks!!  Amazing I tell you.  Simply ah-mazing!

Not completely charbroiled-spot free, but I’m very happy with the results.  I’m sure if I had the time and patience, I could have a spotless oven, but these few teeny-tiny spots look much better than the big black charred spots that were there just 24 hours ago.

There you have it.  I have linked this post to Week 2 of the Organizing Revolution.  I did not know this last week, but you can pop on over to Clean Mama’s Organizing Revolution Week 2 and vote for me!  Voting starts Friday! 

Have you joined the Organizing Revolution?  If not, click on over to check it out.  If you have joined, leave me a comment so I can come check out your space!