My kitchen is small. Like, maybe 140 square feet small. Tiny. But I spend a lot of time in here, both because I’m starting to really enjoy cooking and because the kitchen is the best spot in the house for picking up my neighbor’s internet connection. For the last year and a half, I’ve had my counter set up like this:

With the dish drainer half-tucked under a cabinet. In theory, this meant that I could dry bowls and short cups under the cabinet, and plates in the slots in front of the cabinet. In practice, the plates prevented me from opening that particular cabinet door. Which prevented me from being able to put the dishes away. Ever.

I don’t know why the solution to this problem didn’t occur to me for, you know, eighteen months, but the morning after Thanksgiving I woke up knowing what I needed: open shelving! So my four-day weekend was absorbed by yet another home improvement project. I even ventured into IKEA on Black Friday. Terrifying.

It was worth it, though. With about $100 and three days, I slapped this solution together:

Now the dish drainer doesn’t block anything. In fact, it folds up when I’m finished so I can reclaim my pathetic four feet of counter space!

The only problem is that now everyone can see my dishes. My horrible, mismatched, half-from-Wal-Mart-and-half-trashpicked-already-chipped-from-an-old-neighbor’s-curb collection of dishes. This is serious broke-ass college student stuff, here. Needless to say, classic simple white dishware is now on my Christmas list.