In The Kitchen - Page 2

More stuff from my kitchen ... and yeah, pretty much all of these things were in
my kitchen at some point in my married life. When I look back at all of these, I wonder where I kept them all. A lot of the stuff on the first page of kitchen stuff is from the time I was "into" antiques and collectibles, and the kitchen I had then was pretty big (about 20' X 14') with a lot of space on top of the cupboards to display that sort of thing. I also had several vintage kitchen cupboards that displayed a lot of these items as well.

Oval crock pot.

Now, in my retirement years I'm trying to keep things to a minimum, but I'm realizing that even a minimum of stuff is a lot. At least, it's a lot if you still want to cook without buying a pile of prepared meals. The older we get (my husband and I) the more I seem to have to think about the type of foods we eat - he has diabetes, so low-carb for him. I have thyroid issues, so gluten free for me. You'd think life would be easier after you retire, but sometimes, it just isn't. It can become more complicated than you ever thought it would be.

The things I use often, I keep handy, like the crock pots. I have a lot. They're a great way to keep food warm when you entertain.

In the Kitchen

Vintage jam and jelly jar with spoon.

Most kitchens are places where there are a plethora of gadgets - some useful, some useless, and some that only get used at specific times of year. I don't think I've been in a kitchen that doesn't have the proverbial "junk drawer".  In the house where we used to live, I had more than one junk drawer ... that's the drawer all the stuff you don't know what to do with gets tossed.

Eventually, you might start to clean that out, maybe once every few years when you can't get anything else in it, but it always exists.

Ours has held elastic bands, batteries, twist-ties, bits of paper with numbers on them (often no name to go with that number), old padlocks (sans keys), old keys that didn't fit anything in your home or shed or garage, but that you didn't want to throw away "just-in-case", drill bits, the odd screwdriver, film tubes, christmas light bulb replacements, old lids, a bandaid or two, broken keychains ... if it fit in the drawer and I didn't know where to put, that was the place.