To Be or Not To Be (a spice cabinet)

Nobody can actually live a minimalist life, right?  The practicality of daily chores just gets in the way - especially around the sink.  You need a convenient place for soap, and scrubbers, and paper towels.  The clutter is inevitable, so you should just resign yourself to living with it, right?  

The answer for us, unfortunately,  used to be Yes.  All of the "stuff" drove me nuts though.  So when we started thinking through the details of designing this house, I was determined to design a zero clutter kitchen.  The goal was that everything would have a place - out of sight - and would still be convenient for regular use.  

The first place I started was at the sink.  The soap and scrubbers were small enough to fit in a drawer, but the paper towel holder was much bigger and harder to fit someplace convenient.  I could have just thrown it in a deep drawer but that would mean taking it out, putting it on the counter, and then putting it away.  I felt like there was a better way.  I was right.

I had space on the island for a 12" wide cabinet.  Generally, that would be used as a spice pull out.  We had a spice pull out in our last kitchen and we loved it.  I was excited to have a spice pull out again.  But you know what I was more excited for?  Zero clutter.  I decided that the shallow top drawer of the spice cabinet would be used for scrubbers.  I would remove all of the shallow drawers below so I could install a custom paper towel holder.  Then the soap could sit on the bottom.  Here, check it out:

Pretty sweet.  And all I used for that custom paper towel holder is a closet rod.  So now, we have a place for all of the stuff that used to sit in, or around, the sink - plus there's even room for extra rolls of paper towels.  Here's what it looks like closed:

Unless I told you what was in there, or you follow this blog, you'd have no idea that wasn't a spice pull out.  Here's a close up of the storage:

And here's what our zero clutter sink looks like:

That little cabinet is one of my favorite details in the house - it just makes such a huge difference in the look and feel of the space.

So where did the spices go that were supposed to be in the spice pull out?  That's a post for another day, and another detail in our zero clutter kitchen.

Bye for now,
​TJ