Pantry Inventory and (ahem) cleanup

This is embarrassing, it really is. I go on and on about homemaking just days ago, and now I'm going to show you this.

:sigh:

So, I started on our household organizer this weekend. I did make up a quick budget (which is, yes, what inspired the binder idea to begin with) but since that's not the fun part, I spent most of Saturday making up an inventory of our food storage. I divided it into Spices (I have a lot) pantry and freezer.

I tried to take a screenshot to show you, but I can't quite figure it out. So no pictures, booooo.

For spices I inventoried them by name (brilliant!) date purchased, a column for checking if I need more and where it's located (I keep about a dozenish or more in my kitchen cabinet and the rest in a basket in the pantry.

Pantry I have the name of the item, the measurement, a dozen boxes to check off for amount on hand, a column for additionals, a column for partials and a column for notes. Hopefully this will stop me from having seven jars of mayonnaise and no tomatoes when I thought I had 4 cans. I think it will also come in handy next year during canning. The problem is going to be remembering to add in and check off when I use or replace something.

The freezer is set up almost exactly the same as the pantry.

But the pantry. Oh, that pantry. When we first moved in we made a couple of changes to it, nothing drastic, some extra shelves and some paint. I still haven't gotten around to painting the walls white, though I will.

And since then I've kept it pretty neat and in order. Until the holidays. I was off for two weeks, but organizing the pantry wasn't near the top of my list of things to do. And as a result things just got piled and shoved in there for about a month. Until it looked like this . . .

It's so bad


It really is


Oh gross


Ready??

It was really awful. I could barely fit in there, I had a stack of empty egg cartons I kept forgetting to take to the lady at the market, bags full of recycables (we really need a better system and a drastic reduction, but that's another post). It was just shameful.

So, when I went to inventory it yesterday, I had to clean it out.

And now it's so, so, so much better.

Yay! I can walk in there again! I'd still love to get one more low shelf against the left wall, and I have a couple of plates I'm going to hang on the right wall (and I still want to paint over the tobacco colored paint) but I'm feeling much, much better about it. And now I actually know where things are and what I have. Hooray!

This week for the household binder (which, like I said is going to actually be two binders) I hope to refine our budget, finish the freezer inventory, make copies of insurance documents and birth certificates, and create a sheet of who our wood and fuel vendors are, electric, cable etc . . . and bill pay information.


I've been pretty cranky this weekend. Organizing makes me cranky, but getting things accomplished feels so nice. I've got ribs roasting in the oven, homemade barbecue sauce simmering on the stove, tea in my hand and a nice clean organized pantry. Ah, it feels good :)