Organization--The Spice Of Life

Some people love chaos and confusion.

Some folks love order and method.

I am the latter.

I can't stand things to not have a place, a "home".  However, our home does not allow all of my stuff to have homes.  Especially a full set of cast-iron enamel pots and pans.

I purchased this set back in the spring to replace our mismatched, gifted and otherwise acquired pots and pans that have accumulated over the past ten years of marriage.  We had wanted a set that we picked out to call our own, so after much thought and research, we decided on this set:

Williams Sonoma, Le Creuset Ocean

However, our kitchen did not have enough cupboard space to house the pieces in a convenient manner.  For the past three months, I've had everything stacked, with dish towels between each piece, in a lower cabinet that required me to get down on my hands and knees and stack, unstack, and dig out the pot or pan needed each time I cooked.  The towels were between each piece because the enamel on the pots and pans scratches when the rough cast iron edges rub against them, and I don't want a set of pots and pans that are scratched up.

This color, Ocean, is too beautiful to be covered in scratches!

Our solution was simple: an industrial set of shelves that would be large enough to house each piece of cookware, but small enough to fit in the corner of our small dining/kitchen space and not look out of place.  We looked around for a while before coming up with something we really liked:

Shelving unit from World Market, $350 plus delivery

Unfortunately, it was more than I was willing to pay.  So, we went with this:

Whitmore industrial shelving unit, Amazon

We found this rack at Meijer for $63.  On Amazon and other sites, it was at least $10 more!  We snatched it up and I went to work assembling the shelves the next morning.  It was really easy to put together, and perfect for our needs!

We bought some S-hooks from Lowe's for hanging the skillets (that was a brilliant idea from my husband), set a layer of shelf liner on each shelf, and placed my two houseplants on the top shelf, along with a half-gallon Ball jar from the '30s whose color looks great with the cookware.

We're really pleased with the look of the rack, and the pots and pans are so much easier to access now!  Amazing the change that a little corner shelf makes when you need just a little extra space.