Simplfying Your Home: Cupboards

I am always looking for better ways to things around my home. About every 2 years, our home changes by adding another baby to the family so I am constantly working around a higher functioning home.  I have a little kitchen so I am always brainstorming about how to get the most out of the space I have to work with.  Of course, I have a list of shelves that I would love for my husband to build but they are not needs at this point just wants, so they will sit in the waiting list :)

For some time now, I have been washing my dishes by hand.  I have a dishwasher but I have preferred, don't ask me why, to do them by hand.  They seem to be easier for me somehow.  One day I was looking at my cupboards and realized how many plates and dishes I kept in my cupboards that I never use but took up nearly two full cupboards.  So it was time to brainstorm......(gotta love imagination movers :)

For our family of six, this is all I keep in the cupboard for all of our meals.

Here is what I did:  I decided to keep one setting for each member of our family (this includes silverware) and one extra setting in case we had a visitor.  All of my other dishes I put in another closet in the house so if we have company for dinner I could easily get to them.  This gave me a cupboard in a half to use for our food pantry and for more important cooking pans that I use more frequently.  This not only freed up cupboard space but it also makes me do the dishes less.  When we need a new dish, we pull from the sink of already washed dishes instead of adding another dish to the heaping pile that stacked up during the day.  For those of you who do not have dishwashers, this might be great to try to cut down on dish washing.  It actually forces you to wash the couple dishes you have at each meal and most nights I actually have a clean kitchen with clean dishes ready for the next day.