A Little Housekeeping

I am sure I have mentioned somewhere along the line that my goal for my home is making every space a useful space.  We have had homes with formal rooms that sat empty (unless you count using them to fold laundry).  Formal rooms have no place in our lives right now.  Anyone who comes to visit knows us well enough to know it will be a casual get together where everyone can relax and you don't have to worry about your kids breaking anything because if ours haven't broken it then it can't be broken.   So.. getting to the point... as I unpacked I found I had all these cute jars and things I had saved from jams or gifts or preserves from friends and I thought why am I saving these to collect dust.  But I unpacked them and put them on a shelf to collect dust anyway.  Same with flower vases-- up on a shelf to be pulled down once a year (if they are lucky) to hold flowers.   I began years ago to store my fruit in a bowl on the counter--- cute decoration and the amount of fruit the kids go through is  too much to store in a fridge. Also hate to forget about it on a shelf and have it go to waste.   

I also started keeping sugar and cinnamon sugar in pretty jars on the counter out of necessity-- little bits for cereal and cinnamon sugar for toast and oatmeal.  An everyday item that making it pretty made my "job" a little more fun.                                                                              

 When we moved to Alabama we discovered that the taste of the water is a bit different, not bad just has a little more chlorine than we are used to.  Every place has water that tastes a little off from the previous place.  Problem here is the boys refused to drink it as is and we did not have a water dispenser on the fridge for super cold water.  Enter pretty carafes and lemon water.  When we are very fancy we make lemon cucumber water-- wouldn't think the boys would be crazy about it, but they would drink it all day.  Having lemon sliced all the time led me to a way to use those jars that were collecting dust. 

 Using my pretty jars made me think of alternate uses for other pretty items gathering dust and thus arrived the idea of the orange vase......

 and the grape hurricane glass.

 They both look so pretty in the fridge and are items that the kids can help themselves too anytime.  At the end of the weekend the grapes were down to one little bunch and the clementines were half done.

Those few little changes made my kitchen feel so much prettier and brighten my mood each time I see them.  Pretty and practical.   I am now searching to find other ways of putting objects I love having into everyday use.   love and hugs, B