Now for the upper cabinet storage

We got the bottom cabinets taken care of with the sliding system. It was pretty and very functional. Everything had a home. That made us happy. We still had the top cabinets to deal with.

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We had removed all of the top cabinets so we could clean them. They had to be put back before we could organize them. We did not put all of them back. We nixed the cabinet to the right of the sink and the one above the refrigerator. By not putting the one to the right of the sink back it really opened up that right hand corner as you enter our galley style kitchen. As for the cabinet over the fridge, well, we couldn't ever get into that one anyway so we decided not to put it back. Honestly, when we opened it to empty it I found my Mamaw and Papaw's cookie jar from my childhood I had thought was in my hope chest. It had been chilling in that cabinet for almost fifteen years. Oops. To say we didn't use that cabinet because of it's terrible location was shockingly accurate. The cookie jar? It's in my hope chest now.

No doors, but still organized with containers

We decided we would not jumble everything up again. My husband suggested we get small containers to organize the shelves and dry rack type items to store and display our plates and bowls. That would also clear up some room in the cabinets we did keep for other things. I always get tickled when my husband says we need "containers". It's an interesting verbiage for him (at least interesting to me). I would say I need a box or a tote or a basket. He always says we need a container. And sometimes I think he believes we have a branch of The Container Store located in the attic of the house where I can just run up and get the perfect size and shape container he is needing.

We kept the dishes that wouldn't fit in our racks and all our cups and mugs in this cabinet.

My husband sent our youngest and me on a hunting mission to locate said containers. I think he expected it to take less than an hour. Let's all laugh together! We struck out at Wal-Mart, Big Lots, and Dollar Tree (disappointingly, I love DT). We did hit pay dirt at Target with sets of flexible, steel gray containers of various sizes. While we were at the Dollar Tree my husband called and was very concerned because his wife and child hadn't come home. I had to fill him in on where we had been and the one more stop we were going to make. I explained how it takes time to find these things if we want them to match. It just amused me he thought we could go grab *exactly* what we wanted in short order.

The one more stop we had to make? Was to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. You see, I wanted a hanging rack for my sponge/scratcher in my sink. I knew I could get it online. (I could also have gotten the containers online, but we weren't wanting to wait to put our kitchen back together as we had the time that day.) I knew if anyone local had it, it would be Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I had seen one at Wal-Mart that I had liked and actually liked better than what I ended up getting, at first. The one at Wal-Mart had a loop that went around the faucet so it would not fall down into the sink. I liked that. But it was in black and I just didn't want black against our large stainless sink. So I decided to keep looking.

What I chose, which ultimately was the better of the two choices I saw that day

What I ended up getting was designed to lay over a divider in a two bowl sink. Welp, I don't have a two bowl sink, I have a single bowl (or rather square). It ended up working well though because I bent one side and set it on the edge of the sink and placed the hand soap and dishwashing soap on the flat to keep it from falling. Then the side that went into the sink I bent like a shelf and set my sponge and scratcher on. While I had liked the one that looped around the faucet earlier, I really liked the way I could set the soap bottles on the flat and keep soap rings from forming on the stainless steel sink edge. It seems no matter how clean we are, we always end up with rings I have to scrub off from bottles near the sink. So it works out better than I anticipated. I paid $9 for it.

For the wall racks, my husband ordered one hanging dish dry rack for plates and one for bowls. Each came with a side car type container for utensils. They functioned very well, however, we were disappointed to find when we unpacked them their drip trays had been broken on the corners during shipping. As we were not using the racks for dish drying, just holding, it wasn't a big deal for us and my husband went on and hung them. Overall we are happy with them, just slightly disappointed about the damage, but it can happen to anything. I have reached out to the company to report the issue for their records and to hopefully correct the issue for their next customer that may not be so easy going about it.

So that's the upper cabinets, so far. There is still a lot more work to do in our kitchen, but it is slowly shaping up. Stay tuned for more of our renovation imagination!

Be well, y'all.