Storage! *Swoon*

I love love love adjustable shelving.

That feeling when you take a pile of stuff and impose a beautiful order (however transitory) upon it ... 

It's wonderful. 

(Regrettably, I don't experience this moment of ecstasy when imposing order on, say, a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Much of life would be smoother if I did. Finding a better way of organizing the plates in the cabinet, though: that'll do it every time.) 

Last week, my friend Gama Bautista, a wonderful craftsman in our church, installed the cans cabinet I had commissioned him to make:

It is on a hinge, so it can swing open, with a wheel on the bottom so it rolls. It fits perfectly in a strange, useless little corner of our kitchen. It has beautiful smooth joins. It is just the  right size for cans, and has rods to keep the cans in place. I want to hug it and kiss it and name it George.

Because I was able to put the cans and other dry goods stuff in the new cabinet, I was able to reorganize the pantry closet. This closet is the only real storage in my house. My house has two other closets and they are both so small that a clothes hanger can't hang straight if you put it on the clothes rod. Here's how the pantry was mid-organizing. (I forgot that I needed to take a "before" picture.)

So, for a before picture, picture the shelves evenly spaced, piled with food, dishes and miscellany. The trashcan is full of wrapping paper and gift bags.

I moved the shelves up so that they were just as high as they needed to be to put my dishes, supplies, and wrapping paper on.* I got rid of the decorated trash can, a bread machine with no paddle, and a chocolate pot. (Actually by "got rid of" I mean "put out on the curb" so if you fancy that trash can, just come on by.) Moving the shelves up meant that I cleared up some space, so I took the bins in this closet:

And this nook in our bathroom:

This nook in our bathroom is completely bewildering. It's so that the plumbing in the bathroom has a wall to go through, I think, but why anyone would configure a bathroom so that this would be necessary is beyond me. Since there is, as discussed, very little storage space in this house, we've been using this space to put bins of Christmas decorations. Obviously, keeping precious keepsakes in a place where steam accumulates regularly (no ventilation in that room, naturally) is not ideal.

And I put all those bins in the pantry! I fit 6 bins under the shelves and stacked 6 bins against the opposite wall.

Vive le organisation! 

*Rearranging the shelves like I did, putting them all near the top, did make the shelves much less stable. If I was putting these shelves in a spot where people would be walking by them, maybe brushing against them, I wouldn't have risked this. But I think it's safe in the closet, and also having 6 heavy bins underneath helps stabilize it.