BostonBean's Profile

We bought our home in 2007, and I've been wanting to remodel the kitchen since before we moved in, but I really can't justify the expense, when the kitchen itself is pretty functional. About six months after we moved in, I added pullout shelves (#6) to my two largest cabinets, which were the biggest source of frustration in my day-to-day use of the space. Those pullouts changed my kitchen completely.

The kitchen has cheap, white laminate cabinets which date from 1991 when the house was built. I covered them about a year ago with a granite-look contact paper, which is still holding up well (and it hides dirt/fingerprints much better than the laminate). Total cost was less than $75. WAY better than spending $5K or more replacing the cabinets, which are perfectly usable, just butt-ugly.

One other thing we did was buy some extra laminate shelving and the little shelf support doo-hickeys, and cut extra shelves for the wall cabinets. Now I have three sturdy shelves in cabinets that previously had two, so i can store a lot more of my infrequently used items in the kitchen instead of the basement

I am leaning toward replacing the white laminate countertops and the sink - I think those two changes would spruce things up enough that I could live with the kitchen layout as is for another five years.

@thiskat - Sounds like you're on the right track. I frequently do a sweep of my daughter's room (when she's not around) and add the "junk" toys to a large storage bin in the basement. Periodically, we go through that together to see what we can off load to friends, Goodwill or the trash, but if there's a crisis where she's missing something and just *has* to have it, then we can always retrieve it from the box.

Am I wrong, or do I see three copies of the same book on your top shelf? ;-)

Now that we are back into school mode (we have a 7 year old), our menu planning is very consistent from week to week. For example, (yikes, this is going to sound SO geeky) Monday is the day I do major housecleaning, so dinner is something very simple, most likely something that I had made a double/triple batch of previously and put into the freezer. Thursday I run all my errands (including grocery shopping) and pick my daughter up from her after school classes at 6:00, so it's a crock pot meal (or occasionally takeout). On Wednesday I clean out the fridge and plan the next week's menu, so we have whatever random leftovers are in the fridge (our daughter calls this "smorgasBorg"). Friday is usually the night for having friends over and cooking a new recipe or labor-intensive meal. Saturday night is homemade pizza night, and we make one of our TNT (tried and true) recipes that everyone in the family likes the rest of the time.

I also use the Menu Planner app (by Innovadev) on my iPhone to keep track of what we're having when. It's very easy to use it to shift meals around when something unexpected comes up during the week, and it really helps keep me on track.

Lebec - bummer that you had a bad IKEA experience. I am in the process of doing a reno on a very small apartment kitchen, and couldn't be happier with the help and attention I received at the Boston-area IKEA (and that was on a busy weekend!). I'm doing mine in the same cabinets (Adel MB) as Frank's, and anticipate my kitchen turning out just as beautiful, albeit quite a bit smaller. :-)

Voracious reader here - but nearly everything I read I get from the public library. I am extremely fortunate to have access to unlimited interlibrary loan, and nearly every book I request (online, of course) is available within 2-3 days, as fast as I would get it from Amazon. Some requests, for very new/popular titles, might take as much as a week to ten days, but I have no shortage of books to read in the meantime.

I would conservatively estimate that I save the equivalent of a car payment each month by not buying every book I read. I do own some books, but they are nearly all non-fiction books that I reference frequently. I used to have a huge (100+?) cookbook collection, but now that I get most of my recipes online, I only have Mark Bittman's, the French Laundry (too pretty to give up), and a couple bread machine books (they were gifts from my husband, or I would have ditched them by now).

I have the Cuisinart 1-1/2-Quart Automatic Ice Cream Maker...and an *extra* bowl, which I keep in my basement upright freezer. It works great for us, and there's no downtime waiting for the bowl to refreeze (well, unless I'm making a LOT of ice cream at one time...).

Something that took me a long time to figure out - if you weren't wild about something the first time you served it, chances are it's not going to improve after a few days in the fridge. Just accept it, then chuck or compost the leftovers and move on!.

A magnetic strip will also keep your knives sharper; they tend to get dull more quickly if they're tossed in a drawer, or even stored in a knife block. IKEA has the least expensive magnetic strips I've found.

Totally worth the (modest) investment: the custom made roll-out shelves that I purchased for my base cabinets (shelvesthatslide.com). My pots and pans are workhorses, not showpieces, so I wouldn't dream of hanging them in the open in my kitchen. :-) But having the roll out trays saves my back, not to mention my sanity, every single day. They were easy to install, sturdy enough for my cast iron pans, and I no longer have to move five pans out of the way to get to the one I need.

I'm not sure yet if they will be worth the cost, but I just ordered three 18" lazy susans for my corner wall cabinet to keep my oils & vinegars and spices & herbs on. Previously, I kept my spice jars in shoeboxes on another cabinet shelf with an alphabetized, computer-printed label on the outside so I could find what I needed quickly. I found that I often bought duplicates of ones I already had, though, so I'm going back to my old system of storing them alphabetically on a lazy susan.

My husband hates plastic storage containers, so most of our are now Pyrex with the plastic lids. They can go in the freezer, oven and microwave, and no worries about plasticizers leaching into the food, and because they are see-through, it's easier to identify leftovers and use them before they go bad.

The one plastic container I can't seem to do without is the quart container used for wonton soup from the local Chinese place; I probably have three dozen, most of them storing soup or stews in the freezer, and a few for homemade ice cream.

I have a large-ish deep kitchen drawer, and I only keep as many containers as will fit in it; any more and I either make some soup for the freezer or toss them out. :-)