Home & Garden, kitchen

Airing my Dirty… Drawers?

May 21, 2013 by Elaine No Comments

Not those kind of drawers. And you’re welcome for that.

I love organizing. I’m an “everything has it’s place” kinda girl. Chef Kev rolls his eyes at me as he’s a “this sock belongs right here on the floor… In the kitchen” kinda guy. But alas, he’s married to me so he has to put up with it (or rather, I do I guess) and as I demonstrate the ‘ol “bend and snap” while retrieving yet another wayward sock, he opens up another drawer to discover that I’ve taken it over and organized it.

And he doesn’t even get excited in a stationery store. How is that possible? Anways…

Enter exhibit A.

These kitchen drawers weren’t crazy unorganized, but the ‘stystem’ (term used lightly) was not working that well.

top drawer:

middle drawer:

third drawer:

And don’t even get me started on the grungy drawer liner that was there when we moved in. GROSS! It looks like we never wiped it but really it was just the texture of the stick on vinyl in it’s bad, bad state. It was horribly beat up.

I take full credit for the crumbs on the drawer lip though.

Nothing annoys me more than something that still looks dirty no matter how many times you wipe it.

And even better? This is what it looked like in each drawer once I peeled what was left of it out!

I should have just left it like this and played dumb.

But no. To remedy this, I made a quick trip to the dollar store and picked up a roll of fresh new drawer liner and a few cheap bins as well as a cutlery tray (which I didn’t plan on using for cutlery – I will explain that later). I think I spent about $7 total!

So after a very thorough cleaning of each drawer I began. Well, by this point I’d really already started but I’m sure you follow me here…

I used a tape measure to measure the inside of my drawers and then cut the liner down to size using the handy guide lines on the back. The cut I had to make didn’t fall on one of the guides, but they helped me to verify that my ruler was straight. Luckily one of my dimensions was the same width as the roll. Handy that! Not all too surprising since it was drawer liner after all but it doesn’t take much to get me excited.

To place the liner in the drawer, start at one edge of the backer and peel back an inch or two. Don’t pull the whole adhesive backer off at once or you’ll have more trouble than trying to put a piece of cellophane around a watermelon after you’ve been drinking sangria all day. Just. don’t. do. it.

Next, place the sticky edge at the front of your drawer and rub out from the centre, first to one side, then from the centre again to the other. This will help your liner stay straight as well as work out any bubbles.

Slowly peel the backer off while repeating this motion until your liner installation is complete!

After I had all my drawers lined, I set about finding a system with my new bins and cutlery tray. I wanted the tray as I loved the skinny nature of each section and thought that could be really good for organizing some of Chef Kev’s go-to utensils. That way he wouldn’t have to hunt to find them while cooking ~~dinner~~ masterpieces.

I only needed to do this for two drawers as the top (cutlery) and bottom (tea towels, plastic bags, plastic wrap, tinfoil etc.) had existing layouts that were working okay.

Once I had those established, I simply reloaded the drawers!

Top drawer:

Oh, and here’s a fun tip you may want to try? As a space saver, tuck your ‘special’ or extra set of cutlery in another tray under your regular-use set. Lucky for us, the drawer is just deep enough to accommodate our extra, nicer set that we use for guests and special occasions. Since the trays have similar footprints, I rotated the bottom one to make them stack better.