The challenge of Week 5 is to organize coffee mugs and tea cups. Include your travel coffee mugs, too.
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Gather your stuff
First, gather your coffee mugs and tea cups from various cupboards. You should gather your travel coffee mugs, too. Save steps by having all your supplies in one cabinet located near the coffee maker. “Someone” has done the math and you may only need 24 cups/mugs. If you have space to store your mug collections, great. If not, can you re-purpose them?
Your coffee maker
Second, in my house, we’ve always had an electric coffee maker on the counter. Nowadays, we use a Keurig machine. Next to the coffee maker is a carousel that holds single-serve K-cups. To be tidy, we keep a paper napkin on the counter nearby to put the used K-cups and coffee/sugar spoons on. At the first opportunity, the napkin and used K-cups are tossed.
We have always had a lot of coffee mugs collected over the years. It takes two large cabinets above the coffee maker to hold all the coffee mugs, tea cups and ground coffee, tea, powder creamers, flavored K-cups, and other supplies. Currently, there isn’t enough space for the coffee travel mugs in these two cabinets. After doing this organizing challenge everything should fit in one space!
Countertop clutter
Above all, my advice is to try not to clutter the countertops with stuff such as canisters of coffee, tea, sugar, flour. While I think canisters and cute accessories look really good in photos, for practical purposes, I want as much free countertop space for my cooking and baking. As a result of that reasoning, every speck of countertop in my home can be put to use when preparing food for family get-togethers without being cluttered with coffee-making supplies.
Similarly, I don’t have a kitchen drawer near the coffee maker that can be used for coffee-making supplies. Certainly, you will see some kitchens have furniture, like old dressers, turned into coffee stations and they look great, but again, I don’t have a convenient location in the kitchen to add another piece of furniture. Do you?
Get ideas from Pinterest
I’m browsing Pinterest (be sure to check out my Pinterest page at https://www.pinterest.com/lifewithdana/) and there are some cute coffee/tea area ideas, but what I’m finding is that the coffee/tea situation is going to be different in every kitchen.
In reflecting on this challenge, my advice is to think about what works for you. How many coffee mugs/travel mugs/tea cups do you need? Do you want to use canisters on the counter or store your supplies in the cupboard?
