Our garbage disposal 'mess' and a plea for help

I have a dilemma that I need help with. And no, it’s not anything earth-shattering, vital to the universe or of great consequence, except to me, of course. I need help re-organizing my under-the-sink cabinet.

Ok, some background here. When we moved into this house, we installed a garbage disposal (well, we didn’t install it). We had originally had a dishwasher installed and I struck up a conversation with the young guy from Sears who came to do the install. He happened to mention that he did other odd jobs on the side and was telling me about this lady who always wanted the ‘biggest and best’ appliances in her kitchen. He had just replaced her (perfectly good) garbage disposal with a new one and was trying to figure out what to do with the one he took out. Light bulb moment here, um – give it to us!

On a side note – I grew up in a house with a garbage disposal and actually had never seen a sink without one until I moved into an apartment for college. I just assumed they were a part of the sink in general and couldn’t figure out what was going on with that first apartment sink. Which was the first of many sinks I have had over the years which were missing this vital appliance. So I immediately jumped at the opportunity to have (a free!) one installed in this new house.

So for just the cost of labor for the install, we had a (gently used) disposal. And it worked great – for 3 years. A few weeks ago I turned it on and was immediately sprayed with some disgusting water jetting out from under our sink. Hmmm…. When Ron finally had time to look under the sink, we were appalled by the disgusting wetness coating everything we kept in the cabinet under there. Even the floor of the sink cabinet itself was ruined – we took it out, right down to the sub-floor. After another couple of weeks of only using one side of our sink and (somewhat) remembering to throw food items away rather than try to use the ruined disposal, Ron finally had a day off this week and replaced it (himself!). We think the old disposal cracked somehow – but hey, three years was pretty good for something bought used (not to mention free), right?

So we have a nice, shiny new (and clean!) garbage disposal. And a sink cabinet with no floor. I’m trying to figure out how to put all of our cleaning supplies and assorted odds and ends back under there and still have them accessible without having to practically crawl under my sink to get to them. I briefly had a lovely vision of ripping out the rest of our dark wood, cheap cabinetry while Ron was tearing out chunks of wet, gross cabinet floor, but unfortunately renovating our kitchen is not a do-able option at this point (darn it!). Oh gee, dear – something happened and all of our kitchen cabinetry just went poof and imploded! We must replace it with light, golden oak cabinets with lots of pull-out shelves and neat cubbyholes… Ok, back to reality (sigh). Where were we? Oh yes, how to organize this:



Any ideas? Ron thinks some kind of baskets, maybe. Or he thinks he can rebuild a floor for the cupboard, but with his track record, it’d be weeks if not months since he has so little time off. I don’t know if maybe some kind of shelves would work – it doesn’t need to be gorgeous, just functional so that I can get to our light bulbs, windex, swiffer cloths, dishwasher soap and other essentials – once I replace all of the slimy ones we had to throw away, that is.

I know – it’s only a cupboard, but I’m actually kind of excited about the idea of making it the epitome of organization rather than the chaos that usually lives under my sink. Boy, I really do need to get a life.