My House of Dreams ~ Rescuing the Kitchen & Related Dilemmas

I haven't been around much today, and I'm sorry for that. I really did want to post something today. Turns out my inspiration today is more of the action variety, not so much the typing variety. I've spent a majority of today just overhauling my kitchen. I've made some grand progress. I've pulled out some stuff for a yard sale, and I've made a better use of the storage space I've got. I'm amazed by how just something so little has freed up so much space. I'm hoping that by tomorrow, I'll be done with most of the project. The biggest victory was weeding out a long-ignored drawer that was stuffed with paper, and weeding down thousands of pages to just a handful. Woo-hoo me!!

But now here's a question to all of the Mrs.’s out there...

One of the biggest things I can do to declutter my kitchen (and make it seem much cleaner and more grown-up) is to take down the extensive collection of bottles and beer steins, which have been collected over the years that are displayed at the top of our cabinets. Of course, all of the bottles and steins signify something wonderful and important to us as a couple or to my husband individually... The empty bottle of champagne from my 21st birthday, the empty bottle of Rum from the Caribbean which we had on our honeymoon, the German beer bottle from when he was serving his country overseas... The problem is that this is Mr. Stepford’s beloved collection, which he likes quite a lot. So suggesting it be taken down is met with the same enthusiasm as if one were to ask to cut his left arm off and feed it to a wild bear.

Oh but ladies, it’s so... So... So tacky! It’s so not Avonlea Country Home, it’s College Frat House. It’s not happily married couple in their mid and late 30’s, it’s a group of male roommates. I feel so embarrassed even sharing that my house has this kind of decor in a common living space! I don’t want him to get rid of the bottles completely, of course. We can store them until we get a larger house, and he can display them in a basement rec room, or he can display them in his office for all of me. I just don’t want them in the kitchen. They don’t fit and they get dirty... Ladies, you know.

Now, I’m hoping that when Mr. Stepford comes home from work and sees the hard work I’ve put into cleaning the kitchen, and organizing it, he’ll be more receptive to the idea of taking them down. But that’s pretty unlikely. So how can I either encourage a compromise on this front, OR somehow incorporate this Frat House motif into my kitchen? Or maybe coping techniques to ignore this horrid eyesore...

I need suggestions ladies. I can’t ask my guests to just not look above eye-level. LOL!