Week 2: The cabinet

The cabinet really should be followed by some eerie sound effect from a horror movie. A good "dun-dun-dun" would not be uncalled for. Every time we had family or friends come over, my husband would shove stuff that was cluttering the counter into this lovely box that fit right into the cabinet. Granted, it kept it close and easy to get to, or at least that was the thought. I think he figured that if we needed it on the counter that it should go someplace close. But most of the time, it wasn't anything that we really needed in the room to begin with. So, we had lots of things shoved in there, including a sprinkler for the kids to run through, jewelry boxes, etc. Well, without further ado, here's the before:

And here's the after:

Anyone who paid close attention last week will recognize the file box from the laundry room. The stuff on the top shelf is filing stuff. The red binder has medical records in it for our information. Unfortunately there's a whole boatload of papers between the binder and the file box that need to be filed and there's just no more room in the file box. It might be time for another. I started to go through the original file box, but a lot of it is stuff I need to go through with hubby, and he's out of town, so it'll have to wait. The boatload of papers consists of stuff for our new house, including inspection info, paperwork, floor plans and manuals from the old owner (which I was very grateful for the other day, when the oven starting beeping at me for an unknown reason...still unknown, but at least we got it to stop!). The green card file boxes are actually quotes that my hubby's grandmother collected during her life, and I have an ongoing goal to put them all on the computer and get a cd of them to her grandchildren. I think it'll be nice for them to know what kinds of things their grandmother thought were important, and since I never met her (just her husband), it's been kind of fun for me as well.

The bottom shelf is not stuff intended to stay there. I think once the kids are older, if we still haven't remodeled our teeny-tiny, poorly laid-out kitchen by then, this shelf will have some art supplies. Right now, with three kids ages four and under, that's just asking for trouble. So currently the stack on the left is computer supplies (which will move downstairs once the basement is finished enough for the computer to move down there), the stack next to that is phone books and the thing on the right is actually an alarm system key pad that kept beeping at me that I was sick of. We don't actually subscribe to that alarm system, so it was a pretty pointless keypad in the dumbest spot to get to. So when it kept beeping, I didn't feel bad at all ripping it out. Currently it's staying under there until I can decide if it's worth keeping it or getting rid of it completely, which will probably mean talking to hubby about it. Meanwhile, it's close to its old home, not in the way of anything else, and nothing else was really going to fit there, so I figured it wasn't a big loss of space. I think I'd like a container for the computer stuff, but meanwhile this works for now. I'm loving this challenge right now, but I'm so grateful I picked something small for this week since my hubby's out of town and Baldy and I managed to get sick. This was just the right sized project! I'll decide tonight what next week's project is going to be and post it tomorrow with a before picture!