Reorganizing To Use What You've Got

My house was built in 1957 and has a teensy pantry. It also has limited counter space, and not nearly enough cabinet space. This makes keeping an organized and well stocked pantry pretty difficult at times. I like to buy stuff we use when it goes on sale in large enough quantities to get us through to the next sale. That's a good plan if I know what I have on hand and therefore know what I need.

I've done quite a bit of stock up shopping in the past couple of weeks and my pantry was a mess. It was unorganized, I had no clue what I had and everytime I got something out, several other things came crashing down. This was not working. At all.

So today, I pulled a small working table into the kitchen and emptied the pantry. I threw away those things that were past their use by dates. (Fortunately, this was only stuff that I had missed last time I reorganized the pantry --- as the dates on stuff I threw away were over 2 years old --- and I last reorganized in March!). I consolidated items. I put like items together. I moved stuff from bulky boxes to smaller containers.

I now know that I'm running low on coffee, we have enough breakfast bars to last two months, same with sphagetti sauce, I need to use up some peanut butter, and I'm just about out of cooking spray. I can also get to my canned goods without knocking several boxes on my head.

The pantry looks great (well as great as teensy tiny pantry can look!) --- and I've made a list of the items we are going to need in the near future.

This only took me 30 minutes to do, and its going to make dinner time, lunch time, and getting out the door in the mornings SO much easier! Why on earth did I keep putting off this "dreaded chore"?