November IS peak Autumn vibes: cozy evenings by the fire, sweater weather, and the scent of sweet warm spices from the kitchen. That warm feeling expands through our kitchen and into the lives of others by the special meals we prepare for Thanksgiving, and readying ourselves for holiday baking. Take inventory of your kitchen. How is she looking? Are there hidden pumpkin guts leftover from carving that Halloween jack-o-lantern? Are there bags of trick-or-treat leftovers taking up space in your pantry? Can you even find the cinnamon?
We are here to help.
We like to break a kitchen down into zones based on our clients’ needs. For our clients who enter holiday season in a flurry of baking, we want to create a baking zone so they can be most efficient and easily prepared when baking. For our clients who will be the Thanksgiving host, making space for turkey prep will be paramount. For our clients who prefer to drink their calories, setting up a functional bar space with specialty liquors, favorite mixers, and beautiful glassware elevates the space into something that is holiday-worthy. Let’s chat a bit about a few hot zones we have identified over the years.
The Refrigerator
This is the big-mama, mack-daddy of the holiday season. This appliance will be doing triple- or even quadruple-duty, so a refrigerator clean-out is a must. We love helping clients with this process. Condiment clutter is easily remedied by disposing of expired or leaky items. Using the shelves in the door of the refrigerator to store these items is most common, but remembering the adjust the shelves to maximize the organizational potential is a step that typically goes uncompleted. Re-adjusting shelves continues throughout the refrigerator, ensuring minimal wasted space. The addition of clear bins like these can help with grouping like items together, and lidded bins allow for stacking when space allows.
The Spice Cabinet
Fall feels bring up memories of scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla, but we need room for savory spices too like sage, rosemary. Let’s remember the turkey is the star of the show, with all other dishes playing mere supporting roles. When was the last time you remember buying cinnamon? cloves? How long have some of those infrequently-used spices sat in your spice cabinet? Can you locate needed spices easily? Could you use a bit more room for spice storage? Have we overwhelmed you with questions yet? Let us help you. We can assess your current spice-storage-situation, determine if it best serves you or if it merits some relocation within the kitchen, and develop a storage plan that is most functional for your space. It always means we need to remove old or expired spices already existing within a client’s collection. From there, we can collaboratively determine the level of upgrade for spice storage. Some clients want to decant all spices into homogenized spice jars with custom labels, some just want to leave the McCormick where it is but make space for their spice jars to be seen easily. Storage options range from drawer inserts, custom spice racks, wall-mounted spice racks, magnetized racks, narrow risers, and, of course, our fave lazy susan… maybe even a fancy two-tiered one. Let’s get your spice-game strong and ready for your holiday season.
Food Storage Containers
Where there is holiday eating, there will be leftovers. Where there are leftovers, food storage containers are needed. There are so many brand names synonymous with food storage containers: Tupperware, Rubbermaid, Pyrex, Ziploc, Stasher. All of these have one shared problem: WHERE ARE THE LIDS?!?! Seriously, we suspect they vanish and transform into the single socks you find in the dryer. Finding a solution to the lid problem is an imperfect practice, which is why there are so many options available to consumers. There are after-market organizational pull-outs that can be installed into cabinets to help keeps lids and containers perfectly sorted, but these can be a hassle to install. Adjustable doweling systems can work because of their adaptability. On a recent job, our client wanted help organizing her containers WITHOUT any sort of installed addition to her cabinetry. We collaborated and decided on replacing all of her containers with the option pictured above: the lids snap onto the bottom of each container, allowing our client to easily keep track and stack her containers. We love coming up with creative solutions like these to help our clients’ rooms function at their best.
We hope this post give you a spark of inspiration to start getting your kitchen holiday-ready, and if it seems a daunting task, pour yourself a Salted Caramel Appletini from The Speckled Plate (recipe below), and call us for help!
Ingredients:
Salted Caramel Vodka
Apple Cider
Caramel Sauce
Add ice to a cocktail shaker. Add 1 oz salted caramel vodka, and 2 oz apple cider to shaker. Seal the lid and shake vigorously for 40 seconds. Strain into a pretty martini glass and top with a drizzle of caramel sauce.
Tip of the Month
Start your holiday shopping early with the purchase of something EVERYONE on your list will love: a gift card for Amazing Spaces services! Our customizable cards are available for redesign sessions, organizational sessions, paint consultations, and more! Contact us via email or phone for more information.