The Overhaul

This might very well be the lamest, most embarrassing post I’ve ever written, much less published. But…I feel I must take one for the team, with the desperate hope that this will be some pathetic inspiration to someone out there to do something you might fear.

Clean. Out. Your. Pantry.

Our pantry is just a mere closet. Every few weeks, I clean it out, tossing expired things and shuffling stuff around. Last year I tossed out everything that wasn’t Paleo, so there was a mess of pasta and flour and couscous and quinoa and other exotic sounding boxes of whatnot. A lot of it was donated to the local food bank; some was given to neighbors; some was simply tossed in the trash.

I thought I had been doing pretty well about what was in there and keeping it organized.

Holy crap was I wrong.

I had eight boxes of tea. Eight. Who has that? I drink coffee. Good grief.

And take a look at this awful picture. This was the height of the chaos. After several birthday and holiday celebrations and a hunting trip or two, there were again crusty loaves of bread, bags of flour, and loads of other crap in there.

Out of that small closet of a pantry I threw away two garbage bags of trash, one full container of recycling, and two trips to our garden’s compost. I’m still not even sure how that was possible.

People, I could not see the floor of the pantry. And then when I did find it, I scrubbed it with enough bleach water to nearly kill myself.

Totally worth it.

Organization central. Juicer, pressure cooker, and mixer are where I can actually drag them out easily, no longer buried in the bottom. And bins are ready and waiting for supplies of fresh veggies and squash.

My label maker has never been so happy.

And neither have I. Sheesh. We go through a lot of nuts.

It’s been a week since The Overhaul, and not only have we been sneaking over just to bask in the simple beauty of a clean pantry, the boys now have a new hide-and-seek spot in the bottom of it.

Except if they close the door all the way, they can’t reach up past the shelves to turn the knob to let themselves out.

There have been lots of muffled cries this week.

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