The Big Pantry Clean-up

Warren and I had to go out to eat lunch yesterday.  Why? Well my kitchen was a total mess, disaster, and obstacle course.  In keeping with my word for the year, "purge," I had decided to tackle the cleaning out and organizing of my pantry.  This was not a spur of the moment decision.  If any of you have read the Mitford series by Jan Karon, you know of the dreaded armoire story.  Cynthia, one of the main characters, has to prepare her husband, Father Tim, a whole year in advance for moving their armoire.  It became known as the 'dreaded armoire' of which she would occasionally remind her husband throughout the year was happening on such and such date.  I followed her example in deciding a date in advance (not a whole year though), and then prayed nothing would come up to thwart my plans.  Nothing did.  I pulled everything out of my pantry and when I got everything out, I looked around in amazement that all this stuff was inside that little, tiny area.  My whole kitchen floor was covered with spill over in the dining and living room.  Truly an embarrassing sight... to think I had let it get so bad!

With all this, can you believe sometimes I couldn't think of a thing to fix to eat!

Some of the spill over.

Rather than reline my shelves, I patched worn out areas with green duct tape.   Green and yellow...Baylor colors!

I thought I would have this task done by lunch time, but I was just fooling myself.  It took me all day.  I finished the last detail as Warren walked in the door at 5 p.m.  Whew!  I love opening the door now and gazing upon my newly cleaned and organized pantry.  I even made labels so Warren would know where to find things...well, and me too!  Now to keep it that way.

The After... left side...

and the right side.

Now the next major area to tackle will be the garage.  I do not plan to do that by myself.  In keeping with the Mitford 'dreaded armoire' tradition, I have warned my man that the 'dreaded garage clean-up' will take place in April or May, depending on how long our March winds hang around.  I am loving my new word for the year! Purge.