Fabric Baskets for the Kitchen Shelves, or, Something New Makes Everything Else Look Old

 You guys, I might have made my kitchen uglier?

You know how sometimes, when you splurge on something shiny and new, it just makes everything around it look like crap? Like you get a new coffee table (forget the fact that we found our current coffee table sitting by the side of the road a decade ago--I am making a POINT!), and suddenly you realize that your couch is crappy. Or a new headboard, and now you can't stand your comforter. 

All I wanted to do was hide the clutter of a zillion small things on each of the shelves of our open kitchen storage--Will's endless tea bags, all of Matt's cocktail-making tchotchkes, my fourteen homemade and mismatched cloth napkins, etc. So I recalled this fabric basket tutorial, gathered up all my random lengths of random interfacing that are messily stored on my messy study shelves (that at least have DOORS to hide them!), found some stash fabric that didn't NOT match, and sewed seven new fabric storage baskets for the kitchen.

And I used up all my interfacing, so yay!

Unlike in the fabric basket tutorial, I did not pin down the top points or cut off the interior folds:

The baskets are 16" squares, with 3.5" corner tucks on all four sides. The ones that I used my stiffest interfacing in fit the shelf depth of 5" perfectly, but the ones without as much structure are a bit saggy--if you make these, use the stiffest interfacing you can sew!

And now all those tiny things are tidily hidden away, so why do I still hate these shelves?

Could it be because Matt has nowhere else to store his cocktail ingredients, so it looks like the kind of bar hidden behind a false wall of shelving in a gas station? 

Could it be because it's obviously a former literal window, turned into a pass-through when the house was expanded in the mid 1980s?

Could it be because the last time it was painted was that one time in the mid 1980s, and ham-handedly, at that?

Could it be the fact that the pass-through gives an AWESOME view of our messy front hallway?

Could it be the clash between the exact same linoleum of my childhood kitchen, that yellowed 1980s white paint, and that also 1980s-era bare wood?

So, there's absolutely no way that I'm going to replace the exact same linoleum that was on trend for my grandparents, nor am I going to make any modifications to make it less window-like, because to be frank, the shady renovations on my super-old little farmhouse are half the fun for me, but I *might* now be up for repainting, and maybe, if I'm feeling extra spicy, I might even wallpaper over that bare wood.

Here are my current wallpaper contenders. I might be really into that pizza slice one, but don't let that throw you--feel free to tell me which ones YOU don't hate, because I can just about guarantee that you have better taste than I do!