{Today’s Lunchbox} The Kitchen, Part 2 – Peeking Inside the Drawers

Thank you for all the comments and tweets about my 360 Degree Tour of the Kitchen where the lunchbox series originates from.  I do agree it is small, but having that expanse of counter space is pretty key for me – and while that is hardly enormous, it is large enough that my husband and I can both do food prep side by side at that counter.

One other thing? I can make any kitchen work so long as it has a dishwasher.  I have a an obsession with always living somewhere that has a dishwasher – I think it is because the first three years out of college, I had no dishwasher, and that was when I really first started cooking.  I have lived in apartments without dishwashers since (like the one in New York with the hallway kitchen) but for me the dishwasher is make or break. Our last apartment in New York had no dishwasher, so we bought a dishwasher similar to this Danby rolling dishwasher which, while a huge pain to acquire and kind of a pain to use, was one of my favorite things ever.

But enough of that.  As I sift through the pictures of the kitchen, I am realizing just how gargantuan a blog post would result from writing up the cabinets and the drawers together would be, so I am separating them.  There are not many drawers in the kitchen.  There is one under the dehydrator’s home:

As you can see it holds all our sharp knives, microplane, and other sharp things like the can opener. And also has accumulated rubber bands that I really should sort through. 

In addition to that one drawer, there are also four drawers under the counter (it looks like there are more, but the rest are fake drawers). 

The first one is the silverware drawer, which also houses the Vitamix tamper, which I like to keep within easy reach. As much as I like the idea of things being organized with like things, I also like being able to reach things quickly and efficiently, especially if I use them often, so that is why the Vitamix tamper lives there. Under it are the grease catching receptacles that go with the Foreman grill my husband uses often.

The second drawer is where my baking supplies live, along with the Tofu Press I won on a giveaway on Averie’s blog a while ago (put this tofu press under the category of “I thought it was a gimmick until I used it and now I think it is totally worth buying”) and a sushi mat, which comes in handy when making At Home Sushi.

Under that are two drawers which I mainly use for plastic and glass container storage.  The gaps are where additional containers live, but since I never caught the kitchen when everything was in its home, I figured you could fill in what is missing. The bottom drawer also contains my handheld mixer. The beaters for those are in another cabinet – ideally I would keep them with the mixer, but I prefer to maximize space rather than keep like with like, especially for an item like the beaters which I only use a couple of times a month at the most.

In addition to the built-in drawers, I have the microwave set up on a rolling cart, which also has drawers. I use these drawers as the bulk of my pantry space:

I try to keep some organizational system of like with like but invariably every few months I need to sort it out as I start forgetting the system, or run out of certain things, and need to get it back into place. When I took these pictures, I had a system I liked and have (mostly) stuck with:

The top drawer is for dried legumes (I also keep backup packages in a cabinet, but these are the currently open packages and some extras):

The middle drawer is for grains and any flours that are unopened and therefore not yet in the refrigerator:

You can also see chocolate chips for when I bake for my husband or friends.

The bottom drawer is for less used grains (like brown rice – I tend to prefer quinoa), gluten-free pasta and noodles:

And that covers all the drawers in the kitchen.  I will be back Friday or Saturday with the cabinets.

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