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Saturday, February 23, 2013

My Floating-Pantry

Yesterday was an emotional day for me and I did what I normally do when I feel that way: I clean and change things around (with Keith green's songs of course).

It has been almost four months since we moved in and I finally got enough motivation and inspiration to tackle this task - Re-organizing the "Pantries".

Because it is an old house, the pantry does not have that tall closet look. Instead, the top half of the "closet" is a deep, dark, dead space storage area and then an open counter underneath the pantry and then the drawers.

I have been putting this task off because there were just way many other projects to take care of first and if you have been reading my blog for a while, you know how crazy I am with the ergonomic way of organizing.

So I waited and just put stuff that I felt was a "right" place for them and pretty much just tossed stuff into the cabinets.

I titled this post the "Floating-Pantry" because I need to use other cabinets to house all the normal pantry stuff that I could not put in that "half-pantry". I "float" the stuff into other cabinets which works fine now until we could save enough to remodel the kitchen.

Without further adieu, here are the befores and afters:

Before - Deep and Dark

and lots of dead (wasted) space.

I took everything out from the half-Pantry.

A clean slate for me to think.

As a good organizer would do, I ran around the house gathering things I thought may work in the Pantry. Noticed the little wooden shelf?

It fits perfectly on the lone shelf that was in the Pantry! I went and snatched another shelf (I have three of these shelves) and put them side by side... and...


Voila! It looks as though it has always been there. What a delight!

Put everything (after de-junked a bunch of other stuff) back in and made sure it works in ways of easy access. 

Now Robert has a secret chocolate stashing place that Peter can't reach - even with the help of a chair. :)


This is the cabinet above the sink. What a mess. What is in that Kleenex box you ask?

Well, it is re-purpose at its best. A plastic grocery bags holder.

After: Much better. Rounded up all my beloved glass jars. The chocolate stash behind the tall jar now has a new "secret home".

Floating to another cabinet - mainly all the spice and vitamins' home and whatever else I tossed in there. Totally disorganized and it messed up my brain badly.

After: Yes... This is more like it. All the Vitamins go up on the top shelf. My small collection of cookie baking supplies and glass jars for my home made yogurt on the middle shelf and all of the spice go south here. I really like my square Lazy Susan. It swirls around smoothly even after all these years (I bought it way back in the early 90's)

Another re-purpose item. An used black pepper self grinder jar turned self grind for my rough Celtic Sea Salt. love it!



This one was challenging: small and narrow. It almost became a small catch-all place.


But I would not let it. Now it houses all the sweeteners on the bottom shelf. on the middle shelf: My pretty tea bag Tin and the basket of kiddos' birthday cake candles and a quick grab pain killer bottle is in there as well. The top shelf holds a small basket of medicine. It is small because we try to use home remedy as much as we could and staying away from those drugs that give you side effect almost guaranteed.

The last shelf - this is the cabinet above the microwave. The cabinets in the kitchen are very cheaply made as this was a flip house. 

After: I only have a few items in here = no junk (which makes me very happy)


All the sunscreens, room fresheners and coasters are in the square Tupperware box.

Matches are in a small plastic container.

and last but not least, a big white wicker basket houses all the extra kitchen tools.

There they are, all organized and de-junked. what a blessed day the Lord had given me after all. So very thankful. I l love to bless my family with a clean and functional kitchen as we spend lots of time in there, whether we know it or not.

Robert walked in earlier and was surprised and pleased with all the changes. THAT made my day.


~This post is linked to the Thursday Linking Party at Delightful Order. ~

















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