Kitchen Reno: Moving Out!

Now that we've taken a look at the starting point for the kitchen (it's not so hot, lemme tell ya), we need to get the ball rollin'.  Before swinging any hammers or pulling out any cabinets, there's a fair amount of prep work to be done.  I have to get real on you here - a kitchen renovation isn't pretty or fun.  It's a long, stressful, messy project, but the end result is well worth it.
To start the prep work, we moved a bunch of stuff around in our dining room to accommodate as much of our kitchen as possible.  To do this we took one cabinet to the basement, moved a side table & the dog crate to a different corner (to make room for the fridge later). We moved the dining room side board to a spot under a window (this is home to our dishes, toaster and a few other counter top items).  We then moved our butcher block "island" into the dining room (this is for the microwave and other storage).  Finally we moved our tall pantry cabinet into the dining room (this is where we keep pretty much all our food).   Here's our setup that I shared on Instagram recently:

Now all that work took a whole weekend, a lot of cleaning, and a fair amount of sweat to get the heavy stuff shifted.  But guess what, we weren't even close to being ready to get our smash on.  
Next up was clearing cabinets.  What's really surprising is how much crap fits into a small kitchen cabinet.  I started off by boxing up all the stuff that's hardly ever used.  I'll be honest here and say that a good bit of this will never again see the light of day in my kitchen - it'll end up in a goodwill box or a yard sale.   Once the "hardly ever used" stuff was put away, then I packed up the "can get by without it for 2 months" stuff - these are things we like and things we use, but not critical items. Then we took down the "not everyday" stuff - this is stuff we use regularly and will probably need in the next 2 months, but stuff I don't need every single day.  This stuff wasn't really packed away in boxes but is downstairs and easily accessible.  
The hardest part is trying to figure out how to deal with every day stuff.  There are a few choices to make - do we want to put away all the plates, bowls, glasses and silverware and use paper products, do we want to commit to washing dishes in the bathroom sink, or some sort of combo?   We're currently still adjusting and there are a few things that have not yet moved (fridge and a few random items), but we'll work it out as we go. For the immediate future I will be scouring the internet for Crockpot, microwave, and grilling recipes!