Pet Feeding Station, Part 1

I’ve trained the dogs to stay out of the kitchen when I cook, so that they can not beg. In this new house I was thrilled that we had enough space in the basement to set up a functioning pet feeding station – meaning no more cat bowls on the kitchen counters, and no more dog food bowls underfoot in the kitchen.

You may have seen the feeding nook when I first shared a tour of our basement.  We set up a Pax wardrobe to function as storage and feeding shelves, but it needed some organization.

Not only were the storage shelves disorganized, but the dogs were stealing the cats’ food bowls off the second shelf while we were at work.  Something had to change. We considered building a wall of sorts to keep the dogs out and the cat food in,  but found an easier solution in the “as-is” section at Ikea.  A slightly broken Pax drawer unit was marked down to $3, and was the same size and color as our Pax shelves.  We didn’t even have to install it – we just slid it in, backwards, creating enough of a wall to keep curious canine heads out.  I moved the wine fridge over to create a temporary step stool for the kitties, who were very confused by this wall that had suddenly sprung up.

The upper shelves also received some much-needed organization.  Since we’ve yet to design the “grand plan” for this space, I didn’t want to sink a ton of effort or money into organizing it and making it pretty.  Still, a bit of order was needed.   I corralled all candles and decorative crap in two white cardboard boxes, and tried to arrange the large items and vases.  Wait, do I want to keep two shelves full of unused decorative crap in my home?  Not at all.  I try to avoid clutter and keep things simple.  Normally I’d go through it and get rid of at least half.   However, I’m waiting to cut this clutter until I’ve done a bit more decorating through the rest of the house.

But back to the task at hand.  Since I was already on an organizing streak, I whipped out my label-maker and marked the different containers of pet food to make things easy for my fabulous pet-sitter.  In addition to each of the dogs’ names, I added the portions needed for each meal.

I also made a cute and foolproof pet medication station, which I’ll share with you later this week.  Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to figure out my “grand plan” for this space!

In the mean time, it looks like Sunny @ Life in Rehab read my mind last week!  Check out her pet feeding station here.