Hidden Dish Drainer DIY

I don't own a dishwasher. I've lived in my house for over 20 years and I've survived without a dishwasher just fine. I don't mind washing dished by hand. It's just two of us here, so unless we have company it's totally manageable. The one upside I do see to having a dishwasher is that you have a place to hide the dishes while they are being "processed" so to speak. They aren't staring at you all of the time from the dish drainer or the sink. I've always hated walking into the kitchen and seeing them sitting there. The drainer is usually piled high with dished because I'm to lazy to dry them and then put them away. And, even if I did, I'd still be stuck with that ugly drainer taking up space on the counter. It's just unsightly.

 

Here's the visual...Yeah, that's right! Dirty dishes in the sink and some clean ones sitting on the counter. And to be honest, this picture looks pretty clean. It's usually worse. Oh hey! There's the dish rack!

 

(Incidentally, we did an addition off of the back of our house which is why you see that cement board above the sink. That used to be a window. Now it opens into the new living room. I know it's funky. This kitchen needs to be remodeled too, but that's not in the cards right now.)

 

Anyway, I started thinking about what I might be able to do to hide the dish drainer. I wanted a place to leave some dishes while they dry, but I don't want to see a mess on the kitchen counter. I saw some pictures on Pinterest of Italian dish racks that are built into the cabinets. How nice is this?? Hello Beautiful! Those Italians have such style!!

 

 

 

But sadly, I don't have that kitchen and I'm going to be stuck with mine for a long time. It seemed to me that I might be able to come up with something similar (and cheaper!). First, I measured my cupboard. Then I headed off to Walmart. I bought a cookie sheet and a metal dish drainer that would fit inside of the cupboard. When I got home, I moved the bottom shelf up a couple of notches in the cupboard (see the smaller shelf space there?). This made more room for me to be able to reach in and add or remove dishes from the drainer as needed. See the dish drainer in the cupboard with dishes in it? Those are just washed. The drainer is sitting on the cookie sheet, which catches the water drops:

 

If I wash a pot or a large pan that doesn't fit in the cupboard drainer, then it gets dried and put away right then and there. This change has forced me to be neater in that regard, which is a good thing.

And now my kitchen counter looks like this:

It's SO much nicer waking into the kitchen now. :)

Winter Beauty

 

I've never been a fan of the winter. Bundling up like the Michelin Man to go outside isn't my idea of fun. I need to be able to throw on shorts and a tee shirt and go. I'm a native Californian, so you know that as far as I'm concerned... if it's colder than 70 degrees then it's freezing!

 

Well, it has indeed been freezing around here. :-  January 2nd turned out to be frosty cold. Despite the chill I felt in my bones I couldn't help but notice the beauty that can be found in the stillness of winter. I snapped the photo below along the driveway of a client that I went to see this morning:

 

 

This is somewhere out in the country in Healdsburg, CA.

Stay warm!!
Tracy