Cottage Kitchen Apothecary Cabinet: a sensible storage solution

Hi there! I know I’ve been a little MIA sharing crafts and decor lately but I hope you stick with me! There is no HGTV magic going on over here, so when we dive into a big project like the EPIC Room Flip (I never say epic so please let me have this one okay?) we make a mess. Which is how I settled on epic by the way. It was more in a, “I’m going to make a gawd awful EPIC mess doing this flip”, than a, “These are going to be the most epic makeovers ever” sort of way. I barely cook dinner, there are totes, stacks and stuff everywhere and I’m slowly wade through it.

This is me wading.

When we moved into this house we were downsizing from a larger one to a much smaller one. Honestly, if any of you are struggling financially and thinking of making a change to try and manage your finances a little better, it’s recommended to try downsizing your living arrangements, you might also find you have wealth tied up in your home of current, that you could have access to! My stubborn behind kept this through our downsize. (I’d really like to say ass there but I don’t know how y’all will feel about that? Do you consider ass cussing? To me it’s sort of mid way. There are a lot of lesser words I can not stand and you will never hear come out of my mouth. Ass doesn’t really bother me though. Especially in that context. Placing ass after the stubborn just emphasizes the depth of my stubbornness don’t you think? It’s so descriptive. So, now that I have typed ass five times, I’m consider deleting this whole train of thought. Will they think I am terrible now? I’m still the exact same person. They just know I say ass now. Whoops. That makes 6.

Am I fired?

So anyhow… I kept this huge apothecary style cabinet. I knew if I parted with it I’d never get anything like it again. At the time, the only space and wall it fit on in the entire house was in Austin’s room. There it sat. Languishing. Covered in boy stuff. Rubber bands, pocket contents, deodorant and etc’s…

SEE? Poor thing. It was like; “Shannon when are you going to get me out of here?”

It certainly was not being used to it’s full potential. Oh, I thought about painting it a few times but Austin was so anti change and could give a fig about having me do anything in his room so I put my energies elsewhere.

This beast of an apothecary cabinet is clearly missing it’s calling a a sensible storage solution in our cottage style kitchen and it was high time to fix that!

I had planned to give his room some attention last Summer if he liked it or not but we got immersed in the wood floor install and everything that went along with that project and it was shelved. No pun intended. We just ran out of time and the holidays were hot on our heels. No time to be tearing things up. I like to paint in the Summer too, so I can have the house open.

As it often does, everything happened as it should. He wasn’t so receptive then, and is now! We are full into the room flip. The apothecary cabinet is now in the sun room, and it’s given me someplace to have all of our odd and end overflow dishes plus the pretties I like to pick up while I’m in my zen place, HomeGoods.

… and we can’t forget my vintage Ball jars.

Having this cabinet back in the main part of the house, ready to work, did let me lighten up the main dish cabinet in the kitchen. No more stacking a mile high to get everything to fit. I have been cleaning, purging and organizing more than usual. I mean really digging in and letting things go. It started last Spring when I made over our linen closet. After that I started letting more go, more easily. Donating, putting furniture out on the curb for free, even having a “free” garage sale before Christmas and letting all my old ebay stock go to new homes! That was the best. I felt good, I felt freer and lighter.

Admittedly, I didn’t have things in the best places. I meant to fix it but I kept putting it off since there always seemed to something more important to do. I will tell you, these plate stacker thingies are the best! I put all of Jim’s cups and glasses on the very top so I no longer have to stretch on my tip toes to reach up there. Austin’s chore is unloading the dishwasher so it works perfect. I flipped the plates to the middle shelf and put all the loose single glasses on the bottom, where they should be! I deleted dishes that we don’t use which will make unloading the dishwasher that much less time consuming. We had 89,000 glasses. I have no idea why. Well, because I buy them. But I have no idea why? There are only 3 of us most of the time. I’m so happy that this room flip spilled over into a little kitchen to-do project getting marked off the list.

We’ve got the plate storage on the wall. So we are good! Everyday dishes. Organized. Sometimes one project leads to another. Okay. Every time, one project leads to another. We know this to be true don’t we?

I can say flipping the rooms is having multiple benefits!! We have touched every single thing in both rooms and have taken the opportunity to edit like crazy. An entire trunk full of clothes, shoes, books, toys and more has been taken to the Hospice Thrift Store and I think they will be seeing more before we call this done.

Thanks for checking in!!

I’ll be back as soon as I can to share the new decor storage room.

PS: Don’t even get me started on those 18 gloriously empty drawers right now…

Click Here or on the photo below

to read about the EPIC Room Flip

To peek into the future and see more styling, decorating and paint updates to the Apothecary Cabinet over the years, CLICK HERE.

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