A Kitchen Issue: A Personal Story

I have had an issue in my kitchen that I've wanted a solution to for quite some time. I thought there would be a product that would be a quick fix but just couldn't find what would meet my needs. Sometimes the easiest solution is also the most simple solution. For example, instead of a complex strawberry huller, a knife will do. It turns out the same principle was true for my kitchen issue.

The Issue

I have 3 dish brushes that I use daily. A long super skinny brush for my reusable smoothie straws, a long brush for my smoothie cups, and a small handheld brush for everything else. Since I use all three of these brushes every day they were always wet and sitting in water on the side of the sink. Also the brushes would often get tangled with each other and fall into the dish drain side of the sink. So it looked grody and cluttered, was cumbersome, and was probably a little dirty (yuck!).

Looking for a Solution

So I took to the world wide web to find a product. There are gobs of products for dish brushes. And thankfully a lot of these products work for a lot of people! Here are some snags I ran into with just one product.

One product you can get is a stand that holds your dish soap and dish brush in one place. Then you have to clean the stand AND under the stand so since I was already having an issue with cleaning where the brushes congregated this was a more complicated solution. Also, I like my soap dispensers and where they are and how they look. So changing that isn't ideal. Also, I have 3 very different sized brushes and none of the stands I found accommodated for them. So I could find something and buy something new but all of these things (hand soap, dish soap, each of the three brushes) were specifically chosen and purchased to do the jobs that they do so well.

Issue Solved

In the back of my mind I had a solution the entire time. Hooks. Just install hooks for each brush. I held back from doing that though because I thought I couldn't get the right size hooks for each of the brushes and they wouldn't match and it might split the shelf and...

If you remember the "Not Perfect" article I posted recently you'll notice that I was letting my perfectionism win. As I wrote that article I realized what I was doing and said, "no thank you, perfectionism! This might actually be just what I need so I'm going to try it."

Now, a few weeks later, I'm thoroughly enjoying almost everything about my solution of hooks. A friend gave me this fancy hook and the other two hooks were in my stash. Do I wish they all looked the same? Yes. Does it bother me? No. In fact, I love that each hook fits it's brush so well and that the brushes not only don't leave the counter gross, they also have a specific place to go at all times!