Pantry Love

One of the tasks on my holiday "honey-do" list was cleaning out the pantry. Over the past year or so John and I would find items on sale at the grocery, bring them home, and shove them into the pantry. Sometimes haphazardly, with the general end-result of not knowing what we had or didn't have. The items below are just some of the condiments that came from ONE SHELF! Notice the bbq sauces? Yep, 19 bottles, not including the CASE stashed away on the floor of the pantry!


I naively thought I could fit everything on the available counter tops/stove/table top in the kitchen....John had to bring in reinforcements from the garage...items spilled into the hall and into my adjoining office!

Yes, all that stuff came out of our pantry! Needless to say, we are only buying "fresh" foods at this point (fruits, veggies, cheese, soy milk). I must admit it is hard to pass up a good buy one/get one sale on Kashi Cereal, but as you can see in the foreground, we don't really need it! Thankfully, over 95% of the items are still "good" so there was little to throw out. I did empty the contents of home canned goodies that we made in maybe, oh 2001 or 2002! Yeah, probably for the best.

I am proud to say our pantry is much more organized, neat, and accessible. All of the dried beans stand tall in their glass jar homes and ready to be called into duty. Tea is all together in one location, and we now have a drawer to hold all the odds-and-ends, like open bags of chips, small single-serving containers of nutella (I know!), coffee filters. I LOVE IT!