One of the hobbies that Megan and I share is the love of cooking, we seem to have no trouble working together in our cramped culinary quarters. We weave and bend out of each others way without thinking and always offer a lending hand when another kitchen utensil or tool is needed.

But despite our love for cooking and the ease of working together, one thing continues to frustrate us on a continuous basis – our kitchen is small. Not only is it small, but for the longest time almost all of our utensils were shoved into the same drawer. Everything from quarter teaspoon measuring spoons and rolling pins to spatulas to turners ((yes, there’s a difference.  See, spatulas aren’t used for flipping)) were thrown into this almost 10-inch deep cavern of a drawer.

Because our lovely drawer continued to frustrate us almost on a daily basis, we decided something needed to be done. The newlyweds  needed to find a solution and put it in place ASAP!

So what did we do you ask? We did the smartest thing that two people with limited kitchen space would do, put a ton of new kitchen stuff on our wedding registry. Yes, everything from new utensils and pots and pans to deep fryers and Kitchen-aid stand mixers. I guess we were just looking for punishment. 😉 After returning from our honeymoon ((or hornymoon as the wait staff in Cozumel would say)) and having a ton of new stuff, we decided to put our plan into motion.

So on the next Saturday morning we woke up and took everything out of every space in our kitchen. The drawers were emptied and items in all cabinets removed. What we had left was an empty kitchen; a blank slate if you will. Oh, we also removed everything from our china cabinet as well, just to make it even more difficult for ourselves…

Next we decided to just stand in the kitchen for a few minutes and think – where should this go and what should we do with that? With new locations in mind, the work began. We found a new home for glasses, both every day and fancy, dinner plates were relocated, Tupperware and Pyrex found new homes too. Even our appliances found new homes. Actually, our appliances moved to a different room all together!

After spending several hours relocating just about everything, one group of items remained – the drawer refuges.

We decided to use multiple drawers and drawer separators to spread all of our commonly used items throughout the kitchen. So now one drawer has flippers, spatulas and spoons all neatly separated. Another uses the same approach for measuring devices (both spoons and smaller cups), tongs and miscellaneous. Now we still have that stupid drawer, but it’s now used for items that aren’t used on a day-to-day basis such as our rolling pin and meat tenderizer.

Our kitchen has been reorganized now for a little over month and let me tell you, it’s much easier to find everything now. Megan and I still work great together in the kitchen, but not having to dig through a drawer every time you need to find something sure helps make it more enjoyable. The funny thing is looking back we made a ton of changes, although the one that I believe sticks out to both of us is solving the drawer issue!