The second makeover- Kitchen Kerfuffle

These are probably the most familiar and the most embarrassing. Familiar because we've all been there, every. day. Embarrassing because we let it get that bad, though we would dare not let anyone see if possible. But alas, here it is!

So since this fateful day, 3 days ago, I've loaded up the dishwasher (named DW, ha ha!) and run it every evening, full or not. It feels good but kinda wasteful at the same time. Although if you knew the love/hate relationship I have with my dishwasher, it's not really that wasteful. It loves it, I hate it.

So the love/hate relationship is...

Soak dishes in the sink.
Load in DW.
Run the cycle. DW decides to:

turn itself off after I walk away,
not start at all,
run a partial cycle (though all the buttons are pushed),
run the cycle without opening the soap compartment,
get the spinners caught on something that's not in the way.

Re-run cycle in DW, which suddenly works fine.
Re-soak at least 25% of all dishes because they decided they didn't want to be clean.
Load pre-pre-pre-pre cleaned dishes and the start on the new pile that has accumulated during the previous 4 cleanings.

Annoying right? And it's a brand-new dishwasher. State-of-the-art. blah. I really want to go all paper and plastic. I recycle. no pun intended.

My ultimate finishing goal is:
1. to love everything above my cabinets. Its a smorgasbord of things I'm trying out to see what I like and what works for me.
2. Attack the pantry. It's scary.

Well, this is it. Makeover #2!