let’s be shelfish

As I mentioned last week, we recently relocated the herbs and spices to a new location in the pantry, using an IKEA picture ledge in lieu of a spice rack. The trade for that was relocating our storage containers to the cupboard above the stove. This works out well in both cases, since we used to knock the plastic storage containers off the shelf into the recycle bin by accident approximately once every ten minutes.

After we moved the spices, we had a lovely, empty cupboard. But I wanted to be able to store more things, so I wanted a shelf. I did not, however, want to spend a lot of money or have to paint something and wait for it to dry, and then have it be a slightly different shade of white (since these cupboards were painted a long time ago, and not by us). So while I was at IKEA getting the spice rack, I picked up a spare shelf in the As-Is department. It was too big in both dimensions, but I figured we could cut it to size and use the scraps as supports.

We measured.

K ended up deciding to use some spare trim that we had around (and already painted) for the side supports.

We also put a support in on the back of that front divider beam, and did use a scrap of the shelf for that. Ta-da!

And here we have all the storage containers organized and happy. I’m in the process of weeding out the plastic containers and replacing them with glass, but glass containers are pricey so it’s not going to be done right away.

I’m quite pleased with how this project turned out! I’m especially happy that we only paid $2.99 for the shelf, and cutting and installing it only took maybe twenty minutes.