Organizing Kitchen Tools

My husband had a brilliant idea awhile ago when we couldn't use a towel bar in our new place. Then he got so frustrated sifting through the kitchen drawers that he got this idea:

This is our rack in the kitchen for our kitchen tools. For this project, you will need a towel rack (single or double), S-hooks from a hardware store and a drill. The towel rack should come with the screws for fixing it to the wall. A stud finder and a level are very helpful as well. 

To install the towel bar, find a location in your kitchen to hang it. It should be the area where you prepare food. In our kitchen, the towel bar is over the cabinet with our butcher blocks. In our old apartment, we put the towel bar over our stove.

Use a stud finder to find the studs in your kitchen wall where you want to put the towel bar. This may or may not change the desired location for the towel bar. Once you have found a stud, move the towel bar into position. It's good to have two people at this point, one to hold the towel bar into position and the other to screw it into place. Hold the towel bar level and screw the first side into the wall. Move to the other end, hold it level and screw it into the wall.

Now you are ready to "decorate" your towel bar! The S-hooks hold up any kitchen tool with a hole in the bottom which we found was practically everything except for pastry cutters and chopsticks. Once you are done, enjoy your towel rack (and your empty drawers). You'll never complain about finding anything again -- we've done this for over 6 years and I've never had a problem.

Estimated time for this project: about 15 minutes to unpack, measure and screw into the wall. It may take about 30 minutes to add the kitchen tools on S-hooks.

Notes:

• My husband came up with this idea when we were students and it was so cheap to organize! The S-hooks cost about 3 dollars and the towel bar about $10. 
• The S-hook for the pasta spoon had to be enlarged so that we could hang it. You may find that you have to pull an S-hook to enlarge it for those tools that have larger handles.

Brown Sugar Macaroni

Wait, brown sugar and macaroni in the same sentence? You guys probably think that I am nuts but stay with me. I bet you have clumpy brown sugar and you feel like you are hacking into stone with chisels every time that you want brown sugar, right? Did you know that adding macaroni to your brown sugar loosens it up completely? Really.

Here is a project on how to do that.

You're probably still thinking that I am nuts but stay with me. Just don't take this advice literally. When my husband found out about this trick, this is what he did:

So, I spent half an hour this morning taking the macaroni out with a slotted spoon. I wasn't impressed.

What I did is I made a little cheesecloth bag for the macaroni. For this, you will need cheesecloth (about 6 by 6 inches), white thread, a small sewing needle, scissors, 1/4 cup dry, uncooked macaroni and some clumpy brown sugar.

To start, I folded the cheesecloth over so that it was two layers thick. I unrolled a section that was about 6 by 6 inches then I folded it over to see how big of a "baggie" I needed then I cut like so:

I cut a little off of the top as well as I didn't need a baggie that tall:

Now I have a little baggie that is about 3 inches by 3 inches (with the fabric folded over). I took out the needle and thread and started to sew. You can't do a straight stitch on cheesecloth though because it is so holey so I did a zigzag stitch. I folded down the top edge of the baggie and did the zigzag stitch by hand so that I didn't have a rough edge on the top:

Once the top was done, I placed the ends together and started stitching them together. Here is more detail on the zigzag stitch that I did. I highlighted the stitches in blue so that you can see them numbers indicating the order of the stitches:

So, I stitched it up on the sides and the bottom until the baggie was done. I turned it inside out to hide the rough edges.

Then, I went to the kitchen and added the macaroni with a spoon.

I dug a hole in my brown sugar canister for the baggie and dropped it in like so:

Voila! Done.

Estimated time for this project: about 30 minutes. This was mostly in the hand-sewing.

Notes: 

• This really does work! Adding macaroni to brown sugar was a brilliant idea that came from my sisters-in-law so I credit them. 
• You can close off the baggie if you'd like. I didn't so that it would have a stronger effect. 
• Double-threading really helps to secure the sewing. I didn't learn this until I reached the bottom of the bag so if you make this, I recommend double-threading before sewing. 
• I hate hand-sewing. Really. That's why I have a sewing machine.