I must say, we are having fun finding the things we need to make the new little house work for us. I was trying to decide what I needed in the kitchen. I knew I needed a table-height work space, but the kitchen table is at one end of the room and the supplies are at the other end. And, of course, the table is used as a kitchen table, so it always has stuff on it. I thought about getting another table, perhaps a drop-leaf, but I wanted to be able to pull it out to use as a work surface. I thought about a kitchen cart, but they are usually smallish and rather flimsy.
While I was still muddling, one of my Daily Deal feeds pointed out amazon warehouse deals. I guess it was a quiet day, so I looked at quite a few pages of "deals", and then I saw
Metro MW Series Chrome Plated Wire Utility Cart, 3 Shelves, 375 lbs Capacity, 36" Length x 21" Width x 39" Height
This is a commercial cart. The price was reasonable, with the warehouse deal less than a third of the original price. But there is only one review. But the review is good. And the price is good. And if it works, it will be very good.
We ordered it.
This was a "warehouse deal", which means someone may have returned it - perhaps it is damaged - perhaps it is incomplete. Oh, boy, there are lots of things to worry about!
It was delivered in a couple of days. The directions are four wrinkled xeroxed pages of drawings, with titles matching nothing like the name of our item. And there are lots more black thingies than it looks like we need, and there are four white thingies that are not on the drawings anywhere.
Surprise - it went together in less than a half-hour. It's very sturdy. The wheels are smooth working and it glides across the floor.
It's a decent size. And a decent working height.
The first thing I tried was pizzelle.
The cart easily held the mixer, the pizzelle iron, and a cookie sheet with rack.
I was moving right along, so I transferred the pizzelle to a cookie sheet behind me on the counter to finish cooling. It was just stand and pivot, not schlepp across the room. And the height is a better working height for a not-so-tall person.
I am using the second shelf to hold flour. Right now there is stone ground whole wheat, whole wheat pie and pastry flour, Sir Lancelot high gluten bread flour, Wheat Montana all-purpose flour, White Lily all-purpose flour, and a couple of kinds of sugar. Even with this weight, it glides easily and turns well.
The clothespins are holding plastic bags as they dry. (We are very frugal folk, and if a bag can be reused, it gets washed and put away for the next time.) The bottom shelf has a couple of things that have not found a home yet - waffle iron, pizzelle iron, food-processor blades.
And we are finding the cart to be of great use in the kitchen. Yesterday's trip to the supermarket yielded a lot of frozen food. Usually, we would carry the bags to the counter, unpack, and carry the items back across the (relatively small) kitchen to the freezer, pull some things out to rearrange, put them on the floor or take them back to the counter, then sort and carry back to the freezer. Now that we have this super-duper cart, we put the groceries on the cart and wheel it to the cupboard for the canned goods or to the freezer for the frozen goods. Easy to sort and rearrange as needed. I am delighted with this purchase.
We're having fun.
