Spring Cleaning

Never mind that its summer, lately I've been in a serious nesting mood. The other day I decided to tackle one of our house's biggest disaster zones - the pantry. Now how a little closet like this one can become such a mess is kind of amazing, but here it is:


Pantry - Before

It starts out organized, and somehow over time things just get shoved back in any old way, and before long its a jumbled mess of opened boxes, bags of stale chips, spilled dry pasta, and god knows what else. I try to keep up the system, but frankly its three against one here, so its hard going. Instead, every so often I end up doing a complete clean-out.
After I'd gotten everything out I looked things over and sorted the food into like groups on the table and floor, tossing the stale and expired things (My husband has a habit of putting bags of chips back into the pantry with almost just the crumbs left at the bottom, where they stay until the great clean-out happens again).

Then I put everything back, trying to group items in the pantry in a way that made sense (at least to me - my husband wanted to know why all the cans weren't together on the same shelf, and he was unconvinced at my explanation that prepared food in cans (soup mostly) went on one shelf and ingredients in cans went on another). Of course I also had to contend with the kiddos 'helping' me, and then playing grocery store and absconding with various items, and asking to eat EVERYTHING that I pulled out.

Pantry - After

Finally it was done! What a relief to be able to see everything again. Of course this will probably only last for a few weeks, and then the mess will persist for a few months (at least!) but its a great feeling now.