Are you listening, IKEA?

When we moved into our house, we pretty much knew we were trading some unfortunate decor and remodeling choices for a place that was bigger and in a nicer neighborhood than we'd be able to afford otherwise. Of course we had ideas about remodeling and redecorating, but those turned out to be expensive and there were always other more important things to pay for, so we still haven't done much. We redid Nico's room, of course, and we've replaced a few light fixtures and ceiling fans as needed, but that's about it.

For the most part, the things we'd change about the house are strictly cosmetic. I'd love to have the floors refinished (if we could replicate the lovely yellow sheen our hardwoods have now), replace all the granny curtains, and strip the hilarious train engine wallpaper out of the stairwell and upstairs hallway. Physically we'd be thrilled if we could have the semi-finished basement refinished more nicely and add a deck onto the back of the house. (I've even planned out where the lovely French doors would go.) I'd probably do some bad things in exchange for a garden tub in our bathroom.

The main complaint we have is lack of storage space, or at least poorly utilized storage space. We have a great pantry in the kitchen that has barely any usable shelf space. (I advocated redoing all the shelving but was outvoted. We'd need to find a new place to keep our broom and swiffer, but I still maintain we could find a good spot elsewhere.) We have a breakfast nook that we don't need because we also have a full dining room. So far that space is being used somewhat well as extra storage - we have two stacked shelf things and an ugly but very handy metal cabinet that we use for miscellaneous things like cookbooks and garden gloves and large seldom-used kitchen gadgets and batteries and extra canned and boxed food. I'd love to put up shelves along the back wall (where my hippie posters are now) for more storage, so that might happen someday. MB has floated the idea of getting rid of Indy's crate since he's never in it and putting more freestanding cabinets in there, but I argued that if the day ever comes when we get another puppy (hopefully a million billion years from now), we'll want that dedicated spot for the ginormous crate.

We're managing pretty well (and all my friends who have lived in tiny houses are probably dying of laughter right now), but we have had constant spats over stupid little things like where to keep the bread, half-used bags of kid crackers, loose pieces of fresh fruit, etc. I tend to set them on the island-like part of the counter, and that tends to drive MB crazy. He tends to put all the bread products in the pantry, which drives me nuts since I then promptly forget they exist and ignore them until they mold or go stale. Or he sticks them in the bowl with the bananas and then everything tastes like bananas. We've been trying to come up with some kind of solution for the bread since even though it's a small matter, it's a near-daily source of irritation for someone and that just seems silly. I got curious this morning and googled "storage solutions for small kitchens" and found a site that advocated using "ignored" spaces like corners. That made me remember again that we were wasting about 2/3 of the space in our upper corner cabinet thanks to a really bizarre door design. Someday we want to have the whole kitchen redone, but that's a project very far off in the future unless some company decides they want to sponsor our kitchen remodel, so for now we're stuck with our charmingly orange, charmingly strange cabinetry.

In the spirit of working with what we've got and banking on the chances that seeing the ugly cabinet edges will be less annoying than our current (ridiculous) bread battle, I decided to go all in and took the stupid decoy door completely off the cabinet. At some point we'll want to buy more attractive baskets or bins for in there, but until we've tried it out for a few weeks and figured out what we really need up there, I'm pretty happy with the current state. All bread products and fruit and miscellaneous tupperware are tucked away and off the countertops.

Seriously, though…call me, IKEA!