The following is a guest post on a great storage solution for bread & butter in your kitchen from regular contributor, Rachel.
Over the years, I’ve grown to love the readers here at Org Junkie. You have evolved into a network of friends thanks to our blog connection and a shared interest in organizing. Today, I appreciate you even more for a reason you may never guess… accountability.
I was staging my home for an upcoming photo shoot and realized my “catch-all” kitchen countertop was cluttered yet again. It happens more often than I like but it’s usually easy to clear. A book for my daughter’s book report, a candle, a dirty cup, a stack of papers to file, and bananas that weren’t put away after a grocery store run all had a home elsewhere. Everything had a place to be shuffled back to except for one ongoing issue, our bread and butter.
I’ve always kept the bread and butter out on the countertop. We like room temperature butter and keep a sealed container out of the refrigerator. Hamburgers are on our meal plan this week, hence the bag of buns. And, you will always catch a loaf or two of sandwich bread hanging around. These items have no “home” within our kitchen and have always looked messy to me. As much as I like uncluttered countertops, I resolved these things were necessary to our daily life and must be left out.
Our kitchen has an unusual amount of drawer space, so I don’t know why it never occurred to me to put the bread in a drawer. While cleaning, it dawned on me that if I rearranged a few things, the bread and butter would fit nicely in the drawer with our toaster, a logical storage combo. Gotta love those light bulb moments (and yet wonder why on earth I’ve gone years without realizing this simple solution).
Here’s the *ahem* embarrassing part… the drawer where we keep our toaster was disgusting. Apparently, no one in my house can see crumbs nor can they clean them up, myself included (pictured below). I opened the drawer to rearrange and found a ridiculously large mess of old crumbs. Sorry, no close-up but you can see the crumbs around the toaster inside the drawer. Trust me, it was worse than this pictures shows, way worse than you can see from the camera angle I used. It’s a wonder we never had ants in there!
After cleaning away the obvious problem, I added a small tray for the toaster to sit on in hopes of catching future crumbs for easy (and more frequent) cleaning. Everything fits in the drawer with room to spare, love that!
You and I are officially closer friends as of today. 😉 I could’ve kept our food mess to myself and only showed the organized bread and butter transformation. However, I decided to include a picture of our crumb overloaded to say that all things get messy, unorganized, and require reevaluation regularly. Thank goodness for a dirty countertop that led me to an even dirtier drawer. Not only is my “catch-all” countertop cleared off again and my bread & butter have a new home but most importantly, my kitchen drawer got a long overdue cleaning. In a round-about-way, this change is brought on by YOU and the accountability of me practicing what I preach when it comes to organization. So… thank you. 🙂
I have one more small but favorite way to help keep countertops open. I can’t remember if I have shown this in the past or not; I apologize if it’s a repeat. I keep our banana bunches on a hook that attaches underneath the cabinets (affiliate link). When the bananas are gone, the hook folds up flat underneath the cabinet and can’t be seen. I like that the bananas suspend from above. Nothing sits on the actual countertop to hold the bananas and it’s convenient for cleaning underneath.
That’s it for today. Now, go clean your toaster and check it off your list. I highly doubt your crumbs are worse than mine. 🙂
In the professional world, I’m a nurse by trade. But, around our house, I’m known as Mommy to our young daughters. My two worlds collided and began shaping into a blog. Useful Beautiful Home represents the hours I’ve dedicated to managing my household as efficiently as possible. I offer you motivation to keep your home healthy, organized, and welcoming. My goal is to share what I’ve implemented in my home to inspire you with fresh ideas and to encourage you to keep up the good work in yours!
- This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. However, I only ever mention products I love and would recommend whether I was being compensated or not. Thank you so much for your support of my site!
Deanna says
Great post and great ideas!! I have been wondering what I can do with the breads and butter on our counter too so this was wonderful.
On a side note, when I tried to go look at her blog page it appears it doesn’t exist and brings me to some other weird page. Bummer as I was looking forward to checking it out.
Laura Wittmann says
So sorry, Rachel’s site is currently down, she is trying to get it back up but without much luck unfortunately 🙁
Rachel@Useful Beautiful Home says
Hi Deanna! Glad this post helps you! 🙂
I’ve been working on the problem with my blog site for a few weeks now. It’s been quite a large hassle. Thank you for inquiring. I’m hopeful we can get it restored soon!!!
Lynne says
Oh my word–it’s ridiculous how excited I am about the banana hanger! Thank you for this idea!!
Laura Wittmann says
Right!? Me too!!!!!
Rachel@Useful Beautiful Home says
How funny! Love that you can use the banana holder idea too! 🙂
JenB says
Same here with the Webpage. Keeps taking me here: http://buythetop10.com/ Not cool.
Love your ideas. Would like to find where I can read more of your posts.
Laura Wittmann says
So sorry, Rachel’s site is currently down, she is trying to get it back up but without much luck unfortunately 🙁
Rachel@Useful Beautiful Home says
Thanks JenB. I’ve run into major technical issues with my blog site recently that has been a huge hassle. I’m hopeful it will be up and running soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Lena says
I love putting things out of sight! One of my favourite for putting butter into so it stay at room temperature is a butter bell. It’s also super cute so it doesn’t look bad even if it is on the counter. Just search for it on amazon!
Rachel@Useful Beautiful Home says
Is that the container that stores the butter in water? I was looking into that a while ago but forgot. It probably does a better job than tupperware! Thanks for mentioning it! 🙂
Lena says
Almost, the butter isn’t directly in water, it’s in a bell shaped container that flips upside down into water. So yeah water seals it nicely. I sometime add a bit if silver water to add extra protection from it going bad. ( I didn’t get that info from anywhere just decided to try it myself so I can’t confirm that’s it a fact 🙂 )
Ally says
WOW, WOW and WOW. We are getting ready to remodel our kitchen and I have been trying to plan for the “bread” section.
What a wonderful idea, I am definitely borrowing this one. And, the banana idea is great…will implement this one today.
Thanks.
Krista says
I love it when I realize I can get yet another item off my counters! This post makes me so happy for you 🙂 Thank you for sharing your discovery.