Cabinet of My Dreams

Introducing my new cabinet! My friend Bettiegee has been sorting through her apartment and decided to sell me this beautiful cabinet. I have secretly wanted one for awhile now so the exchange benefited both parties.

Today Flourish helped me get it from Bettiegee’s to my place with the use of a Zipcar. I have been feeling under the weather and worn down for weeks now, but I was determined to do this thang. We were able to make it from Bettiegee’s home in Rogers Park to my place in Logan Square with only minimal rain. That’s until we were unloading it from the truck, when the drizzle started to pick up. Thankfully we were able to unload right in front of my courtyard gate and the rest of the move went quickly. Getting it up the flight and a half of stairs took some negotiating due to the cabinet’s height. It cleared the doorways only with careful shifting. We were able to do it though, and once in my place, we used a towel to slide it to its new home in my dining area.

I spent the evening anchoring the cabinet to the wall and shimming it before cleaning the shelves and window doors. Then I had the fun of loading the cabinet with all of my goodies. I am still loving how nicely everything looks display out. Before it was all crammed into my cabinets, hiding in the nooks and crannies that I had.

Starting from the top are my teapot sets. I have quite a collection of vintage and new teapots. The far left is a vintage Asian teapot I inherited from my stepfamily. Behind it are the teacups that match my Target Asian dinner set (see shelf 4). The next set is another vintage teapot and matching two teacups. The third is a teapot and four teacups I got for Christmas last year.

On shelf 2, I displayed my Crate & Barrel red stemware. This line was discontinued a few years back so I am very careful with them. They are delicate. My mom had a set of the martini glasses and ended up breaking three of her four, so I got the remaining one to make my set five. I have champagne flutes, martini glasses, wine glasses and cordial glasses all in the red shade.

On shelf 3, I have a few sets. The red is a heart set from Target that includes two mugs with heart-shaped handles, matching heart-shaped saucer/plates and heart-shaped ramekins. The middle set is a vintage saucer/plate and matching mug. I love this set since it’s perfect for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some juice. I have rarely used this set since it’s been in higher up shelves and hard to reach. Now I look forward to using it more frequently. The last is a sake set with two sake glasses.

On shelf 4, I have my Asian dinner set from Target. It includes divided plates for three sauces, rice bowls and plates (far right). I also put a small decorative tea pot and two individual brewing teacups on this shelf (middle), and two rice bowls with chopstick indents (far right on top of plates).

The fifth shelf holds most of my decorative serveware. I have slowly acquired these pieces over the past few years and love each piece. They used to be housed in the cabinet over my fridge and couldn’t be seen. I have serving platters, four-quadrant serving dish, bowls and egg plate.

The last shelf houses my fiestaware that I bought at Goodwill, a pitcher that happens to match that I got with some flowers and a Crate & Barrel serving bowl. There’s still plenty of room on the bottom two shelves for some more serving ware as I acquire any. I like how much room still remains.

With all this reorganizing of my cabinets, I was able to move stuff around in my cabinets. I should have taken a picture of the before, because it was seriously cramped and cluttered. Now I have more room in these cabinets and better organization.

This is the far left cabinet in my catch, to the left of the sink. It used to house the red stemware, some barware and a few coffee-making tools. Now it houses all of my mugs! The bottom shelf holds coffee, coffee flavorings, tools and saucers. The perfect coffee center!

This cabinet, to the right of the sink, used to hold most of my mugs and glassware. With the mugs moved, I was able to spread out my glassware, which includes highball glasses from World Market (top right), a variety of juice glasses purchased at Goodwill (middle), my collection of vintage Coke glasses and Crate & Barrel water glasses (bottom).

The main cabinet, which had a majority of the random pieces now in the main cabinet, gained a lot more room to breathe for my dishes. This includes my main dining set (the light blue) and some other more frequently used pieces like my appetizer plates (middle white square plates).

All in all, it was a very productive day. I still need to reorganize my bakeware, which is partially held in the cabinet above my fridge and in the boiler drawer of my oven. I think I want to move it to above the oven and move the stuff in that cabinet to above the fridge, since it’s harder to access that stuff. That will be for another day (most likely tomorrow). Yay for new cabinets!!