UHeart Organizing: A Crazy Cool Coffee Station

Do you love coffee as much as I do?  It is my morning bliss.  However, I can't just keep it simple.  A couple of pretty mugs {mug hoarder alert}, sauce, a frother and spoons, and I feel like I touch every nook of the kitchen just to make a cup o' joe.  My organizing brain has wanted to do a little coffee station for a while now, so I was thrilled with Ashley, stopping by from 7th House on the Left, decided to share her version with us today.  Here she is now!

Over the past year, Greg and I’ve been working on a major kitchen renovation. We’re finally bringing the project to a close by putting some of the small finishing touches in place. Something Greg has wanted in the kitchen since day one is a coffee station. Not a big, fancy espresso machine or anything, just a little section of the kitchen where he can easily put together his morning coffee and indulge his inner coffee geek. While Greg looked at this as a morning necessity, I saw an excuse to organize!

Having a coffee station is a great way to get your morning started on the right foot and makes those extra early mornings a little more enjoyable. When you’re half-awake and up before the sun, it’s great to have a nice, organized area where you can prep your coffee without having to think too hard – especially if you’re not a morning person, haha!

When making a coffee station, you obviously need to start with a coffee maker, right? We just got around to buying a coffee maker this past weekend, which is what spurred this project on in the first place. We decided on Cuisinart’s 12-cup drip brewer and hot water system, and we LOVE it. I promise I don’t work for them, haha. The hot water dispenser is what sold us. You can use it to make anything from a cup of tea, cocoa, oatmeal, soup, to ramen. We eat oatmeal around here quite often, and we both enjoy a cup of hot tea from time to time, so this feature comes in especially handy. Which, I guess would make this more of a

coffee/tea/oatmeal station…?

Next to the coffee maker, we have a small tray with a few of our daily necessities. I like to keep the kitchen counters as uncluttered as possible. That being the case, I decided to keep things simple and corralled just a few things and put them on a small tray. That way, if I need the counter space for anything, I can easily move it out of the way. I filled a small creamer with tea spoons for stirring and placed it on the tray with a jar of nutmeg and a glass votive candle holder turned Starbucks Via packet holder. I plan on switching out the nutmeg for other seasonal flavorings as the holidays roll around. I have a bottle of gingerbread flavoring waiting in the wings!

Like I mentioned earlier, in the mornings, the less hassle the better. In that case, I’m more of a Starbucks Via person {their Carmel Macchiato is really good} while Greg, no matter how much of a hurry he’s in, avoids any form of instant coffee like the plague. That’s why the Via packets are sometimes replaced with a container of Greg’s favorite coffee. Yep, marriage = compromising from time to time.

I designated three shelved in the cabinet above the coffee maker to the rest of our coffee/tea necessities…

Let’s start at the top. Here, I put the things we don’t need to get to on an everyday basis – extra coffee, extra filters, scoops, boxes of specialty tea, etc. I designated one basket for tea and one for coffee by hot-gluing bookplate labels on the front. Next to the baskets are the coffee grinder, a silver sugar bowl and matching butter dish that I only use every now and then.

On the middle shelf, we have the tea bags and sugar {which is actually Splenda}. I put the tea bags and sugar in glass jars. Ordinarily, I’m a label fanatic, even when it comes to clear jars like these. However, in this case, since you can clearly see what’s in them, I decided to refrain myself. But it might not stay like that for long, haha. Next to the jars are our to-go mugs for hot drinks on the go.

I put the things we use most frequently, like coffee mugs and {more!} flavorings, on the bottom shelf. To keep things simple, I decided to keep only four mugs on the shelf – just enough for the two of us. I keep the rest of our mugs in another cabinet and only bring them out when we have family/friends over. Next to the mugs is what we call the “flavoring tray”. I filled a silver creamer with individual French vanilla creamer cups. The saltshaker is filed with cinnamon {one of my favorite coffee flavors next to nutmeg} and the little ceramic owl is a sugar shaker for “real” sugar for people who prefer it over Splenda. It’s fun to pull it out when people come over so they can have a variety of options for their coffee.

Now that we have a totally organized coffee station, it makes mornings a little more enjoyable and a great way to get the day started right. We’ve only had the new coffee machine for a few days but I’m already getting the used to my new morning coffee ritual. Coffee and a muffin, anyone?

"I'm Ashley from 7th House on the Left - a blog where my husband, Greg, and I talk about renovating, decorating and living in our first house here in Hanover, Virginia. I’ve been an interior design enthusiast and a long-time fan of all things organizing. Yep, I was the kid with the perfectly arranged Disney stuffed animals, alphabetized coloring books and the categorized and color-coded sticker book. When I'm not busy writing or doing projects around the house, I love classic TV shows (particularly I Love Lucy) and curling up with Greg, Bentley (our 9-pound Pomeranian), a blanket and a good black and white classic movie – I’m a complete sucker for Audrey Hepburn, Doris Day, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant films. I'm thrilled and honored to be a part of the IHeart Organizing team and excited to get to work!"