Simplifying Silverware

So have you ever gotten up in the morning, dirty dishes in the sink and clean ones waiting in the dishwasher?  You have to fish out the needed breakfast tableware and silverware, hoping that what you need isn't in that overcrowded sink of yuckiness.  After breakfast, the remainder of your morning is pretty much dictated by the knowledge that you have at least 30 minutes of dish duty, and it's not yet 8:00am.  


Know the feeling?


In response to my frustrations, Tyler has easily consented to my simplifying and minimizing our kitchen over the past few months.  As long as he has a warm supper, happy wife and smiling baby, he's usually okay with my minimizing!  (Hooray for a supportive husband!)


So far it's going well... and then I woke-up yesterday morning and there were NO clean spoons for Tyler's breakfast.  Really? We have eight teaspoons and eight tablespoons!  This is INSANE!  We are three people!  


We have four cups, four bowls and four plates, so I decided to keep the four trend going.  I decided on four butter knives, four tablespoons, and four dinner forks.  I put four teaspoons in a jar at our coffee station.  The salad forks have been totally dismissed from the silverware stock.  I haven't decided what to do with the "excess" since we are hoping for a large family, but I know that minimizing was essential to our simple home.  For now the silverware will be stored with my "should-I-garage-sale-this/wait for six months" pile.


Rita has four spoons, three forks and one knife.  I think that we might even remove the wooden utensils, as they are a bit too "baby" for her at this point.  This would reduce her to having two spoons, one fork and one knife, which seems best.


So our everyday silverware drawer looks like this:

Bibs at top left, napkins at top right and silverware at the bottom.  So clean!

Our true silverware was a total mess, so I used the drawer organizer from our daily silverware to sort and organize the fancies that we use when we have special occasions and/or company over.

Silver polish, blender parts and mixer parts at the top, silverware on the left, and specialized utensils and Baptismal candles on the right.

Overall I am so relieved by these changes.  Yes, it's taken a few days to round-up the straggling everyday silverware, but I am convinced that this will be especially nice when we transition from a family of three to a family of four.  
The fewer dishes I have, the smaller my wash pile will be, and that makes me happy!

Can you relate?  Has the amount of dish washing you do caused you to question the volume of dishes and silverware you have?  How did you simplify?