Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Pantry: A Work In Progress

Since I'm on a roll with attempting to organize my home a huge problem area for
me was the dreaded pantry.  My goodness, what a mess.  



I was inspired by Courtney at "A Thoughtful Place" who shared her panty organization
as well as "Thrifty Decor Chick" who shared her pantry redo here.  
Seriously.  Go check them out.  
I am totally jealous of these two!!!!  

Yesterday I started out by taking everything out.  I checked everything for expiration dates and, of course, ended up throwing out tons of food.  With so much food crammed in there and stacked on
top of each other, there was simply NO WAY to see what all we had.  What a waste! 

I recently added the racks on the door for more storage and even after cleaning 
everything out, I still didn't have room to put everything back in!
You saw my closet.  I seriously think I have hoarding tendencies!
I'm working on it people!



You can see that there has been some improvement but it's nowhere near where I want to be.
Part of the problem is that we buy way too much food to start with.  We still have like 30 cans of soup and beans?  Really?!?!  WTH???  We rarely even eat soup!  Then we had, and I'm not kidding, 12 boxes of opened crackers and cookies.  What good does that do?  Again, more waste since none of them 
are sealed tight and end up getting stale.  I really need to invest in some nice 
clear containers to store cookies, crackers, etc. but first and foremost...
we need to eat what we currently have before moving on.  Soup anyone???
Once I get the pantry in some type of order, I'm going to try to be diligent about keeping up 
with what we currently have and not to overbuy.  And meal planning is also a 
huge goal of mine.  

What about you guys?  Any tips on what containers I should use?
Any tips on pantry organization and how it "flows" best?
What about tips for meal planning?

2 comments:

  1. OH I dream of an organized pantry too! Ours is one with the roll out drawers, which I thought was great when we first bought the place. Once I started putting food in the drawers I realized they are just deep enough to make it difficult to see what is in each area. They also cannot take much weight....!?!?!?!?! What is the point of a pantry that can't hold canned goods? I hope to find some time (HAHAHAHA) to yank a few rolling shelves and fit the space with a fixed shelf instead.
    As far as meal planning, I try to do a month at a time, but find even just one week helps out enormously. I just use a regular old calendar and write in a menu. It helps when you are busy because you just look at the calendar, pull what you need from the cupboard/freezer and you are good to go- no thinking about it again. I highly recommend!
    Good luck!
    E

    ReplyDelete
  2. It sill looks fairly organised to me! I always tidy mine up but within a couple of months it's starting to look a mess again. Frustrating! I don't have hoarder tendencies but I definately need to work on putting things back where I found them I think! ;) Love your blog!

    ReplyDelete

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