17 May, 2016

Corralling the Cutter Clutter

Baking and decorating cookies takes time and practice, I'm okay with that. I am completely dedicated to the learning curve and all that entails. Naturally, a new hobby includes lots of new tools; collecting them is the fun part: cookie cutters, specialty gel colors for the icing, icing bags, bag ties, tips, couplers, flooding bottles, sanding sugars, rolling pin spacers, spatulas and the list goes on.  I dedicated a kitchen drawer to the ever-growing collection and quickly learned that organizing all of the tools was going to be the bane of my excitement, each time I opened the drawer for "cookie day" I sighed-- and wrestled out what I needed before quickly closing the drawer again; the tools and equipment were all piled on top of each other in one huge mess. I felt defeated before I began. Well, enough was enough! I knew what I needed, dividers in the drawer! The space seemed sufficient, the drawer is big: 19.5" square and 7.5" deep, the problem was, as I saw it: no way to confine certain tools to their own area-- every time I opened the drawer the motion itself contributed to creating a disheveled heap. I mentioned this to Mr. Goodneedle after I took everything out of the drawer and laid it out on the counter top so that he could see what I was dealing with. He perused the "pile" and suggested "laying out the drawer space" as I envisioned it with dividers. The real problem was the cookie cutters; they refused to comply with space restraints. "Oh, wait" I thought; "I have some storage bins that might just work". (Actually, one of them was holding a UFO that needed to be released into the light of day so that I could work on it. But then, that's another story for another day!) As fate would have it, those two bins, stacked, fit perfectly in the front of the drawer and held all of my cutters nicely! Who knew? In no time at all the cutter clutter had been corralled. Mr. Goodneedle suggested I live with this drawer arrangement for a little while and if it made sense after using it a time or two then he would, indeed, install custom dividers to the space. That makes sense to me. What doesn't is the fact that I put up with this messy, disorganized drawer for months. What seemed to be a HUGE problem for me was easily and rapidly managed. Hmmmm.... what other mountains are looming that can be reduced to mole hills this efficiently? I know I won't have to look far. In the meantime, I am enjoying the happy solution to my formerly "overwhelming" cutter clutter problem!
Life is Good!

3 comments:

jude's page said...

Yep, organisation is the key isn't it? I am gradually getting my house organised. I love to work in my kitchen now that there is a home for everything, and realise how stressful it was before! Still need to organise my sewing stuff yet though.

Paula, the quilter said...

My sock drawer was like this! So I made dividers (like you would find in a case of wine) for the drawer. It makes me smile, now, to see all the hand knit socks neatly folded into their little cubbies. :)

AnnieO said...

It is always nice when a simple solution works---but the forehead smacking can be painful :)