I’m still getting used to calling this house “our house.” Technically, this is Zac’s home. He bought it and owns it and gussied it up—I just moved in. So when you guys write me via Instagram and compliment ME on this house, I feel so awkward thanking you because, like, I had nothing to do with it. But I digress.

A little background on our home: It was built in the 1920s, so it’s quirky. And old. But gorgeous. One of the larger “quirks” is the lack of storage space. Houses just didn’t have room for all your crap way back in the day. Granted, most people didn’t have a lot of crap—those were the days of pure minimalism and I’m envious of that lifestyle. When I moved in here back in April, we quickly realized just how much stuff we were combining and most especially kitchen stuff. While the kitchen is fantastic, the storage situation leaves little to be desired. Most of our cabinets are low to the ground and they’re deep, which is great but they’re also dark and get real musty real fast. For someone who cooks a lot, bending down to get the pots, pans, bowls, and other kitchen gadgets from musty kitchen cabinets is a bitch and a half.

On top of that, we just have so much stuff: extra dishware we aren’t ready to part with, so many cords, all the cleaning supplies, gardening junk, random vacuum attachments that are actually quite effective but you forget about them cause they’re such a slut (I just wanted to quote Mean Girls. We forget about them because they’re not in plain sight). When I first moved in, we made do. Z already had two random shelving units in the laundry/storage room, so we loaded them up the best we could and left it for a while as pictured below.

In a word, yikes. It worked for us for a minute until, one day, Z couldn’t handle it anymore and declared he was going to The Container Store, which he did and came back with an entire system of shelves. Just racks and racks of shelves by Elfa to install and manipulate himself. It just so happened that I was getting my hair done that Sunday afternoon, so when I came home, it was like a mini reveal to see what he had done so far and I was mesmerized. He wanted to take advantage of the height of the room, so he installed the shelves as tall as he could while leaving enough room for our storage cubes that I had grabbed 10 of from Target earlier that week.

It took several weeks and a lot of playing around, but this past weekend, we (Zac) finally got it to a place we’re happy with.

Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she wonderful? But for real. Now, is it preferable to have so much dishware and glassware out in the open like this collecting dust? Probably not. But it’s 100x better than storing it so low to the ground in musty old cabinets. Plus, I think Z did a killer job of making it all look aesthetically pleasing. These Elfa shelves are so cool because not only are they super easy to install (or so I’ve heard), but they are easy to adjust depending on the look and kind of storage system you’re trying to build. Since we upgraded and got a mini fridge for beverages only (when I was in middle school/high school and my friends’ homes had a SEPARATE beverage fridge out in the garage, I considered it the epitome of sophistication and class, so I guess we’re super rich now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯), we needed to adjust the shelving to fit it in perfectly, and we did! We also have room for our 3-bag laundry hamper now, which worked out beautifully.

Yesterday, I took it a step further by grabbing several packs of these clip labels to slide onto our cubes so we know what the hell’s inside. I honest to God wish someone had been filming me while I wrote the labels out—I’ve never been so focused and anxious in my entire life (that’s a straight up lie), but they turned out great.

I am pretty obsessed with how easily I can go into this little room off the kitchen and easily grab whatever pot or pan I need. I’ve tried many systems for storing them over the years, and this is by far the most convenient. I’m sure this entire setup will be ever-changing, but I’m proud of what Z created with it thus far. If I’ve learned anything in my few months of “home ownership,” it’s that there’s a lot to do always and it takes a lot of time to do it all, so this was a great accomplishment.

Over and out!