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"&amp;quot;I know I can cook, but the place where I cook...it&amp;#039;s a mess! I&amp;#039;m very disorganized, I&amp;#039;ll admit, and so when I got to chatting with my friends at GH and they offered to clean up my act, you know I jumped at the chance. Let me tell you what my problems are. I am guilty of buying way too many gadgets \u2014way too many! And though I try to keep things nice and orderly, sometimes I get distracted and stick saucepans where the stockpots should go. Then there&amp;#039;s the fact that I have people I work with running through my kitchen all the time, taking things out and putting them back willy-nilly. It drives me crazy! I say to them, &amp;#039;One day I&amp;#039;m going to come to your house and move everything around and see how you like it!&amp;#039; Another big problem is, I never have enough drawers \u2014 I need more! \u2014 and the drawers I do have are a big mess. Sometimes, too, I fall in love with how things look, even if they don&amp;#039;t work well. Like my sink. It&amp;#039;s antique, and it&amp;#039;s copper. Came from Paris. I would love to throw it in a river! It&amp;#039;s not practical; it&amp;#039;s so deep that when you wash dishes, you come away hurting because it cuts your belly as you lean over. We had to have a welder build me some racks to go inside it so I could keep my little dish-washing bucket raised up some. So I made a bad, bad error with that one (but it is the most gorgeous sink I ever did see).  There are some things I got right in my kitchen, of course. I have my dish pantry, which I just love. You know, I said to Oprah, &amp;#039;This room is as important as the laundry room!&amp;#039; Every kitchen should have at least a small dish pantry \u2014 lots of shelves where you can see what you&amp;#039;ve got. Never again will I have to get down on my hands and knees to try to find a piece that I know I have somewhere. You know it&amp;#039;s right there at your fingertips when you&amp;#039;ve got pantry shelves set up at eye level. I have the same lack-of-space problem as most people. But you know why? Because everybody likes to hang out in the kitchen. I&amp;#039;ve put in the most narrow table I can find. But my husband, Michael, is a big man, and when he sits in his chair comfortably, I have to turn sideways to get by. But that table helps me out. Because, as I said, I think you can never have enough drawers, I had the woodcrafters make it with two drawers on each side, so that gave me my junk drawers, or a place I can keep something that I don&amp;#039;t want to get away from me. Like a recipe someone gave me \u2014 I know if I put it in one of those drawers, I can always go back and find it. And nobody knows they&amp;#039;re there! For keeping my cookware, instead of cabinets, I love what looks like a cabinet but actually is big drawers \u2014 I love pull-out drawers for pots and pans and things like that. So much easier.  I&amp;#039;ll tell you something else I did right in my kitchen, and that&amp;#039;s my appliance pantry. It houses my mixer \u2014 so I walk over there, I make my cake, and I shut the thing off. If I don&amp;#039;t have time to wash everything, I just shut those doors and nobody knows. My coffee machine is there...my food processor...my waffle iron. I use that waffle iron a lot. You can have two waffles going at one time. And I have a fabulous place where I keep all my baking things \u2014 my measuring cups, my mixing bowls, my flour, my sugar, my baking powder, my baking soda. Everything&amp;#039;s right there so I don&amp;#039;t have to go hunting for it. Because so many people come in and touch my stuff \u2014 they&amp;#039;ll borrow it for a photo shoot \u2014 things always go missing. That&amp;#039;s what happened with my little round cutting board that my daddy gave me when I was 18. When I first got married, I came over to see Mama and Daddy, and I said, &amp;#039;Oh, I don&amp;#039;t have a cutting board.&amp;#039; And he reached over \u2014 now, all my mother had was that one little round cutting board \u2014 and he took it off Mama&amp;#039;s counter and said, &amp;#039;Now you have one, darling.&amp;#039; And Mama said, &amp;#039;Don&amp;#039;t give her my only cutting board, Earl!&amp;#039; And he said, &amp;#039;No, it&amp;#039;s hers.&amp;#039; I have moved 37 times, but I have kept that cutting board with me. Now, with all the filming going on in my house, I have no idea where things go, and one day I was out in the garage going through a box that they were getting ready to take to Goodwill \u2014 and there was my cutting board! You know, I haven&amp;#039;t seen my daddy since I was 19, because he died at 40. I took some paper and a Magic Marker, and I taped this message on it: &amp;#039;If you touch this, your % is grass, and I will track you down.&amp;#039; There aren&amp;#039;t many things that can get me riled up, but believe me, I&amp;#039;m very protective of the few little things that I&amp;#039;ve got that connect me to my roots.  Anyway, so let me tell you my favorite things from how GH fixed my kitchen. I just love what they did with my pantry. Oh, that chalkboard inside the door! I did not even know that there was such a thing as chalkboard paint. And the little round tags \u2014 they keep everything neat and are just adorable. The buffet station, that&amp;#039;s just great. I&amp;#039;m actually going to take the utensil and napkin caddy and keep it right by the stove so I don&amp;#039;t have to walk all the way around to that silverware drawer to get a butter knife when I&amp;#039;m cooking. There are so many ideas here; thank you, GH, I think I&amp;#039;ll use every one of them. It&amp;#039;s going to be a busy year, so being all tidied up will help me get through it. I have two more grandsons than I did last year. I just want to see them all the time; they change so much at this age. And I have my new food line in the works \u2014 I think it&amp;#039;s over 200 items. Hopefully I can make a difference; it&amp;#039;s delicious food that&amp;#039;s just so easy. I think it&amp;#039;ll help people enjoy their lives...it&amp;#039;s good! It&amp;#039;s not all healthy food, but then, I always say, &amp;#039;Lord, just please don&amp;#039;t let me die chomping on a piece of lettuce.&amp;#039; I am so blessed. I&amp;#039;ve been way over-blessed. At 64 years old, I look forward to going to bed every night so I can wake up in the morning and see what blessing is going to come my way that day. Because you never, ever know what God&amp;#039;s got in store for you.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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