Pantry Clean-up

I walked into our kitchen pantry yesterday to check our "inventory" and see if anything needed to be added to my ever growing, never ending grocery list.  (I have to feed a family of 6!) I am standing in the pantry looking, well digging really, through our goods and thinking to myself, "This is a disaster.  Didn't I just organize everything in here?"  Well, yes and no.  I did begin organizing everything in the pantry (a year and a half ago!) but I did as I almost always do and got distracted and never finished up the project.  I failed with the follow through.  So after 1-1/2 years of use and abuse after starting but not finishing the initial organizing process I was left with a well labeled but completely messy pantry.  I decided to take a day, and part of a night, to take control of the chaos.

Before 

I set up my "work station" in the corner of the kitchen.  Turned on a Stephen King audio book and brewed a big cup of coffee.

I began by creating some super cute labels in Word, printing them on regular paper and cutting them out.  I have handy cardboard open front boxes that I use to organize in the pantry. I love them because they are square sided so they don't take up extra unused space.  I cut some cute 12x12" printed scrapbook paper to fit the fronts of the boxes and taped the labels on over it.  

I went through all of our pantry items and trashed the out of date items, bags of chip crumbs and empty containers.  I vacuumed up all the crumbs and dust from the shelves and floor and began to cluster items into their label categories.  Then I spent a few minutes explaining to my husband why the house always seems to get messier every time I clean. 

After a few hours and a trash bag full of junk I am left with a clean, organized, and attractive pantry.  

After

Now the trick is to keep it clean and organized!