Kitchen Packing

I chose this cartoon by Jeff Bucchino of The Wizard of Draws because for the past few days I've been juggling in the kitchen trying to cope with packing kitchen items in preparation for the move in two days. Out of necessity the kitchen is the last room to be packed and the first to be organized at the new house. It is very important to me that we eat homemade meals as long as possible before the move. This move is different in that we have to do kitchen renovations immediately after moving in order for our JennAir to fit in the kitchen. That means removing and ancient built-in stovetop, built-in oven, and non-working dishwasher. This will free up counter space while replacing the countertop and dishwasher. The kitchen is top priority once moved as a month later we are having quite a large gathering for our anniversary.

Talk about a juggling act! I've been packing the kitchen for the past few days now. There is nothing like seeing a growing stack of boxes to realize you have too many recipe books, too many herbs and spices, too many gadgets and way too much food. It's a great time to purge but unfortunately besides a few outdated by my standards homecanned foods, very little in the way of food was tossed. As far as small appliances and gadgets goes, I purged those a long time ago so nothing went out the door from that category.

It's also a great time to rely on freezer, refrigerator and pantry stores. Not only does this save on the cost of eating out or take-out foods, it reduces what you have to move. It's surprising the meals you can come up with just shopping from your food storage. This helps rotate the foods as well. I'd just about kill for some fresh fruit or a salad about now! We used the rest of the salad fixings on Sunday so I haven't had my daily salad fix since then. We are pretty much out of dairy with the exception of a few cheeses Money I would have spent on these items is in an envelope so I can replenish after the move. We grilled filet mignons last night as a final toast to this kitchen. It's been good to us. From now until we move in two days, we will likely eat out. That gives us a break from the chaos as well.

This is the perfect time to clean all those appliances! Why move dirty appliances? As we are setting up the new kitchen, I want everything ready to use. I washed all the small appliances before packing them. Today the oven is being cleaned (self-cleaning), the fridge washed out and the microwave cleaned. The small freezer is being moved filled while the larger freezer is being emptied to fill the freezer the previous owner is leaving. The dishwasher will be run for the last time today so I can clean it good for the new owners. We'll use disposable from now on as the dishes will be packed today as well.

So that is how the kitchen packing is proceeding.

Garden Gnome
© 2007