Tackle It Tuesday

My tackle this past week was the kitchen pantry. Oh my word. I could not believe how junked out it was! I had no idea what I had on hand, I was buying products that I already had on hand, while not buying the products that I was low on. It was pantry disorder at it's finest. Absolute craziness!

So I started off by taking EVERYTHING out of the pantry. And I mean EVERYTHING. I grouped all the like items together. After doing that, I then decided to pull out everything from our overflow cupboard as well. And our spice cupboard too. It was a big ordeal! Unfortunately, I only got pictures of the pantry before - not the spice or overflow cupboards, because I didn't intend to get them done too. But it was necessary. Items in there belonged in the pantry and vice versa.

So, pantry before pictures:

Things were grouped together in there but there were some duplicate items in different areas and it just needed a good overall clean out. It also needed to be organized in a way that made more sense.

Things were just tossed in here and while they were grouped together, it wasn't exactly the best plan. Plus there were many outdated items in there. Also, do you see the bag of potatoes? Down there at the bottom? Let's just say that potatoes do not belong in the back of the pantry at all.

And here, there were many outdated boxed goods. And I had too many items that I don't use on a regular basis down low while the items that I was using was up high on the upper shelves.

So, I decided to use the upper shelves for the overflow and store extra of the items that I already had down below. Instead of trying to keep it all completely grouped together, it meant that keeping an amount down below on the shelves that I would typically go through in a certain amount of time, and keeping the extras of those items up on the shelf. Rather than having 30 cans of peaches down on the shelves, I have room for six. The other 24 cans of peaches would have to go up on the overflow shelf. I can just replace what I need from my overflow shelf first.

The area behind the pull out on the left is my baking good center. I have cake and muffin mixes on the top shelf. The second shelf holds crisco bars, powdered sugar and brown sugar. Shelf three is home to flour and sugar, while the fourth row has a container with butterscotch chips, a can of evaporated milk and a cookie mix on it. There's an empty shelf and then on the bottom, there are three jugs of cran-apple juice.

The right side of the pantry behind the pull out shelf has all of the pasta and sauces and helpers. Top shelf is boxed pasta. Lasagna noodles, manicotti noodles. Second shelf is more boxed pasta. Elbow macaroni, penne pasta, mac n cheese. Bagged spaghetti calls the third shelf home, while the fourth shelf holds pasta sauces and a can of yams (may seem odd unless you know that you can use yams to stretch the pasta sauce).  Fifth shelf is refried beans and taco shells. And the bottom shelf is Hamburger Helper boxes.





This is the shelf and cabinet above our stove. On the right side of cupboard area, we have our overflow or less commonly used spices. On the right, soup bases. The shelf has my Tupperware containers on the left that hold powdered milk, instant potato flakes, splenda packets, pink lemonade mix and two empty containers. On the right, our more commonly used spices. So handy to have all of this stuff right here above the stove.

Before, this was our spice and overflow cupboard. I hated it. It was cluttered, there were so many things in here that didn't belong in here and it just wasn't nearly as convenient. Now, it holds only what it needs to. Top shelf is for currently unused items on the top left, and cooking oils on the right. Middle shelf has a sandwich section on the left (peanut butter - SIX jars - no kidding!), honey and strawberry preserves. The right side has two 24 packs of microwave popcorn. Extra butter and light butter. Bottom left is more baking supplies - baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, and yeast. In the middle, there's the citrus juices - lemon, lime, and key lime and then a can of french fried onions. On the right is a drink mix center. We have hot chocolate mix, coffee, cappuccino mixes, malted milkshake mix, apple cider packet, crystal light packets, and tea packets.

So there you have it. That was the tackle that I did this past week. And once again, I apologize for the poor quality of the photos. At that point, I was still taking pictures with my phone. I have since gotten a new power cord for my camera. Well, sort of. I bought Hubby a camera that was similar to my own, that I was pretty sure would have the same power cord as mine (it did), and so I am using his until I actually locate my own.