Real Life: What's on Our Kitchen Counters

We've done a tour of what's inside all of our kitchen cabinets (way back here), and although you're probably used to catching peeks at what we keep on our kitchen counter, I thought it would be fun to give you more of a detailed impromptu tour! After all, what we leave on our kitchen counters is what we likely use the most or like to have at arm's reach. A friend had just dropped off some flowers for Greta after her surgery and besides throwing the mail from the island to the adjacent dining room table, these photos aren't staged (I'm really wishing I would have plucked Greta's play tea cup from next to the cookbooks among a few other things). Just from a random day last week when the sun was shining on our kitchen. (I linked the products under each photo for easy reference.)

On the far left counter, we keep our flour, sugar and brown sugar canisters. We recently switched from opaque ones to these glass ones and I love them so much, plus, you can easily see what, and how much, is inside. There's nothing worse than starting to make cookies and then realizing you're low on an ingredient. We also stacked two olive wood boards that we have never used for them everyday cutting, but we do love to use them as serving platters--they add so much warmth to a tablescape...and backsplash. :)  Bonus! The large one is under $20! 

To the right of the sink is where Chris keeps a small collection of cookbooks--the rest are in the den. And you can see where Greta's tiny teacup hides out that she uses to help water the herbs. Every little bit counts. Back in October, before baking season was in full swing, we purchased this marble rolling pin--Chris really loves the weight, smoothness, and control of it. His granite mortar and pestle he's had since college (over ten years!) and those are the kind of things that just get better with age.

I've talked about our Amazon Tap a little bit in the past. The girls have so much fun playing and requesting songs, that it usually ends up in the playroom after school. So we got a second bluetooth speaker, a Bose one, that stays on the kitchen counter. One of my favorite sounds is when Chris turns on his playlists and I hear the stove light.

On each side of the ranges, we have over-the-counter cutting boards from Ikea. They're cheap, but I linked another budget-friendly option if you don't have an Ikea nearby. On the counter to the right of the ranges is probably our most used counter--right out of the pantry, by all the knives. We used to tuck our toaster away, but after we realized it is our most-used small appliance, it felt worth it to keep it on the counter. Which, helped us decide it was worth it to splurge on one that was nicer to use and look at.

For Christmas, Chris asked for that 12" pepper mill--he claims it's the perfect size after having an 8" for too long. We keep coarse salt in the cork-lidded container and butter in the butter bell next to the toaster. Chris really likes picking up olive oil and vinegars from Mountain Town Olive Oil Co when we're in Salt Lake. (If you aren't local, they have a website.) They have so many different, distinct flavors for a lot of different raw or cooked uses. We find ourselves reaching for the bottles throughout the day.

The marble utensil holder (and spoon rest) is semi-new and makes me happy. I realized recently, if there's a tiny update you can do in your home, like a new utensil holder or a good-smelling hand soap--do it! So many times, for so many years, I focused solely on things we could do or purchase that would make a big impact in the way a room in our home looks, and often overlooked small things that were fine or placeholders. The funny things is, there's so many small, inexpensive updates we could make that we use constantly throughout the day. Spending a few dollars occasionally makes even the tiny moments in our house feel special and loved.

Do you leave your countertops completely clear? Sprinkled with functionality? Or styled to magazine worthy at all times?