Tag Archives: cleaning out the pantry

May 12, 2022 · 4:14 pm

Pantry Progress

BEFORE– To say the pantry ‘needed work’ is a vast understatement. After the third day of working on it, light is beginning to show on the ‘supplies’ side of the pantry.

BEFORE-I’ve thrown away a bunch, relocated several things, then cleaned and re-arranged the rest. I’ve tried to get things we don’t need often up (or down), using the most accessible shelves for things we use all the time.

BEFORE-One thing about having a nice, walk-in ‘room’ for a pantry is that there is lots of room. The downside of that, though, is that we tend to ‘stash’, getting lazy and finally ending up with a mess.

Below I’ve got a couple of pics of improvements I’ve made so far. There are more things on the ‘food’ side of the pantry that need to be moved over here, but the big part of the reorganization is finished.

AFTER-My husband even said, “Wow.” I spread our meds out into categories, with clear labels and the current stuff we use all the time the most accessible.

AFTER– There will be tweaks needed, but I’m breathing a sigh of relief. I actually ‘found’ several things I didn’t know we had. :0)

I’ll try to start the ‘food’ side of the pantry tomorrow.

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January 23, 2022 · 9:48 am

Diet Day 1

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My husband and I have been in a kind of celebration mode ever since my test showed I won’t be croaking from cancer soon. It’s good because – no cancer – but bad because I gaining back lardage I’m determined to shed.

My husband dug out some packs of popcorn. Honestly, I have NO idea where he got it. I had THOUGHT I cleaned out the pantry really well. These packs must have been YEARS old. He went ahead and popped it. It smelled a bit over cooked. It tasted truly AWFUL. One piece of popcorn for each of us resulted in trashing both packs. I had him show me where he had found the popcorn – WAAAAAAAY back in the corner of the middle shelf. I almost had to climb into the shelves to reach them. I threw them all out, feeling a bit proud that I had avoided a bad thing and now the stash was gone.

Last night when I was fixing dinner, I found a NEW box of microwave packs of popcorn. My husband tried to give me his innocent look – one that hasn’t worked ONCE in 52 years of marriage – but he still tries.

You KNOW where this will end. The popcorn is calling to me now…

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January 23, 2020 · 1:06 pm

Pantry Project

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This obviously isn’t my pantry, but it shows my feelings right now. I’m a bit overwhelmed, even though I AM making some progress (I think.)

Two years ago, more or less, I cleaned out our walk-in pantry and felt very virtuous. I’m both a bit of a hoarder and a slob, so getting the whole area cleaned out felt great. Then two years of essentially stuffing things wherever I could find a spot ensued. ( Did I mention I’m a slob?)

SO – We have been eating keto for awhile now. Both of us are very happy with the food we can eat, and I’m adding to our ‘go-to’ GOOD recipes all the time. That said, I’ve been noticing that I’m having to dig deeply to get to the things or appliances I want, and this is dumb. What I use all the time should be easily accessible.

So today I’ve started cleaning out the pantry, either giving away or storing what we aren’t using, throwing away what we’re not eating, and re-organizing the rest.  So far, I’ve spent an hour and a half, basically making a mess in there. This will improve the more time I spend in there, so I’m concentrating on not feeling overwhelmed and running away.

I am officially taking a break now and we’ll have lunch, and then I’ll do another hitch. This will probably take a couple of days. I’ll take pics when the job is finally done.

I hope I’m not the ONLY person who needs to clean stuff out….

 

 

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February 10, 2018 · 1:12 pm

Pantry Project – Day 4

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This is Day 4 of the Clean-Out-The-Pantry project, and I HOPE it will be the last. I’m hanging in there, but I have to admit I’m pretty bushed. I now have 7 large trash bags in the garage to go out Monday evening, and we haven’t started gathering the ‘regular’ trash for the week! We do have several things to give to Methodist Church’s food pantry when I get finished, and I’ve gathered several things for the next trip to the Veterans Thrift Store.

One thing that has helped is we got 6 large plastic see-through bins so I can put like things together, such as sugar substitutes, or low carb baking mixes, or different kinds of flour. I used 4 yesterday and we went back today – since we’re due for freezing rain all day today into tomorrow, and shopped for groceries, too – to get 2 more. I THINK that should finish it. It will certainly make cleaning easier in the future.

Other than my husband’s sacred ‘chips and crackers food group,’ we’re pretty much down to things we can/should eat now in the pantry. Things won’t be so jammed together and it’ll be easier to find things.

If I finish today, I’ll post pics.

I hope you’re having a wonderful day.

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February 9, 2018 · 2:07 pm

The Contest is On….

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EEK!!!!!

The contest is on for the oldest thing discovered in our pantry. So far, the winner is 1996 – a can of fruit cocktail in one of the back corners…

I had also been keeping large plastic containers of things – Better for Bread flour, All Purpose Flour, Brown sugar, regular sugar, etc. in two rows, one on top of the other, all the way across the back of one shelf. I’ve just finished throwing all that out. We’re not eating ANY of those anymore. I don’t know why I was so reluctant to dispose of them. Some were yucky, too….

I’m taking a break now, and then I’ll start to try to make a baking supplies area, a condiments area, etc. out of the chaos that reigns now. At the rate I’m going now, it’ll probably be the end of the weekend or into next week before it’s reasonable again.

I think I’ll sleep well tonight!

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February 9, 2018 · 9:54 am

Pantry Purge – Day Three

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We’re going to enjoy our good friends at Lunch Bunch today and then I’ll start Day Three of the clean-out-the-pantry project. The non-food side of the pantry is almost finished.

 

 

On the food side of the pantry, I’ll try to recapture areas such as baking supplies. I’m going to first start gathering food we aren’t (or shouldn’t be) eating on our low carb lifestyle – except for ‘saving-marriage-stuff, such as the chips food group, for my husband.

I’ve got this! (I HOPE)

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February 8, 2018 · 10:41 am

Another Exciting Day at the Lewises!

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I wish that I could tell you that exciting things are happening at our house, but it ‘just ain’t happnin’ as Arkansans say.

My husband will probably work in the shop again, working on his welding lathe. He’s had to make almost all the parts, and he’s done a beautiful job. He has the main part of the tool welded together, painted, and on casters with brakes now. He’s having to carefully put the long 2″ in diameter solid tube of metal on the lathe today because it has to be exactly 2″ in diameter, and there are places where it is over that. This means it won’t go inside the 2″ hole in the tool that it has to, so he’ll have to carefully cut off the parts that shouldn’t be there, whittling the piece down to as close as 2″ in diameter as he can get it. He’s heating up the shop now. I’ll take progress pics soon and post them.

I’m making slow progress on my clean-out-the-pantry project.

I have discovered in all the cleaning out/purging/donating/reorganization stuff I’ve done this year, that I try to have one area serve way too many purposes. I’m trying to consolidate and relocate stuff that ‘shouldn’t be there’ more than anything. Hopefully, this will result in my being better able to find things going forward.  (An example of this is I had two over the counter meds on the shopping list for this coming Sunday. In going through things yesterday, I found we didn’t need to buy them – we already HAD them!)

 

Another example of my lack of organization was that I keep buying another package of clothespins, which we use around here for all sorts of things other than hanging laundry. I had them ALL OVER different parts of the non-food side of the pantry. I’ll probably never need to buy another one, along with good bottles of shampoo…

I went through both of these bins, throwing away expired meds for both humans and animals and reorganizing the rest and labeling them.

 

At least you can see that some of the shelves are cleaned out. I’m heading back in there in a few minutes to continue my slow, but steady work.

I hope that YOUR day is more exciting than ours….

 

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February 7, 2018 · 5:46 pm

Pantry Project – Day One

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I did three sessions on my cleaning out the pantry project. So far, it looks worse.

I’ve thrown away a bunch of stuff, started gathering stuff to donate, and have reorganized some things in bins, but there is ‘stuff’ still on the dining area table and unless you know where to look, you wouldn’t know anything had been done in there. WHEW!

One good thing – I certainly got my exercise today.

This is one of those projects where it only looks better when an area is completely redone. That won’t come for at least another day or so. I’m concentrating on the non-food part of the pantry first. There is a LOT to go through, so I may not be posting any pics soon – at LEAST until I get the non-food part cleaned and reorganized.

I’m trying to keep the kitchen so we can still cook, make hot drinks, feed animals, etc., with an area clear for doing each activity. It seems impossible right now, but little by little, I’ll get it done.

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October 20, 2016 · 11:54 am

Cleaning Out the Pantry

The Spadina Monologues - WordPress.com

The Spadina Monologues – WordPress.com

I’ve spent about an hour so far in our pantry. I’m making progress, but it’s VERRRRRRY  slow. Thus far, I’ve discovered that

  • almost NO condiments, such as A1 Sauce, Tartar Sauce, Ketchup, BBQ sauce, etc. are good for our low carb/as-little-sugar-as-possible lifestyle. ( I did find a mayonnaise made with olive oil that’s good, a low-sugar ketchup, and I made sugar-free BBQ sauce a couple of days ago. I’m going to need to do lots of research – particularly in the area of tartar sauce for my husband – and do some good replacing, or making more of my own.)
  • I’m not at all sure my husband can be switched to low sugar or sugar-free jelly. (But then I also realized that we’re not going to be eating bread!)
  • We have LOTS of fruit in heavy syrup :0(
  • I’m going to need to get lots of boxes from the shop to hold all the stuff we’ll give to the local food pantry. (NOW I feel guilty that we’ll be giving families the stuff we KNOW isn’t healthy…)
  • My husband ordered an entire CASE of Krustees Snickerdoodle cookie mix – I’m hiding this in one of the back corners of one of the shelves so that I can treat him on his birthday and Christmas…
  • SOME of the things I’m finding I ordered in order to use it for particular recipes – but I don’t remember WHICH recipes. I’ll have to look up the ingredients on the net to find out if I want to keep these or not.
  • Cleaning out and reorganizing the pantry should be at LEAST an every-six-months job so that I’m not completely overwhelmed by the size of the job

It’s a very good thing that I’m not on a strict schedule for completing this job. I’ll do hour+ sessions, resting in-between, until I’ve finished.

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October 20, 2016 · 10:23 am

Ahhhhhh!

s-media-cache-ako.pinimg.com via Cathy Ruggiero

s-media-cache-ako.pinimg.com via Cathy Ruggiero

Isn’t this picture WONDERFUL? This is just how I feel this morning. The front came through late last night/early this morning. Yesterday the high was 91. Today it’s supposed to be 71. AHHHHHH!

I’m happily wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt as I type. The doors are open, front and back, airing out the house. We may actually have to close a door if it gets TOO cool. How great is that!!!!

Since working outside may not be an option, at least until later in the day, I’m going to dive head-first into our pantry and see what good I can do. Since my husband is serious now about trying to avoid sugar, or things he eats that cause his body to MAKE sugar, I’m going to get together a huge group of things to go to the local food pantry.  (When we had our home built almost 30 years ago, we devoted the room off the kitchen to be a walk-in pantry. We have huge, heavy-duty built-in shelves going from wall to wall with a place for a 2nd fridge. We live on top of a ridge line. Sometimes we get snowed in up here and can’t get down – or back up – our STEEP driveway until the snow and ice melts – once for 14 days without power or public water.)

If you don’t hear from me, I probably got buried in there.

 

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