Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Today is the second day of my series on Pantry/Freezer Organization in a bid to help us be more aware of, and use, what we have on hand. Too often I am *sure* that I have something and when I start making the meal and realize that I don't really have everything I needed. I went through all of my main kitchen cabinets and you could read about that here.
The next step should be to go through your pantry, if you have one, and clean-up/organize/inventory this as well. Some blessed people have a pantry room, still-blessed people have a pantry closet, and then there is the basement shelf-user like me. I know that I am still fortunate to have excess, and a place to store it, no less, but humor me a little bit here. My basement has crickets. Not just one or two, but rather a large community of them. Thank God they don't sing, but that also makes them a creepier variety, the cave cricket (don't click if you are faint of heart).
We are coming up to cold enough temperatures that I will have a few months of peace before I begin to see those nasty buggers again, but my fear of huge, jumping, attacking spider-creatures makes me wary of my basement in general. Unfortunately, my laundry area and pantry/storage are in the basement which means just one thing. My dear husband is in charge of anything basement related. I almost never venture down there, which can make this 'pantry organization' time a bit challenging.
So this is what we had to do. I had to venture down there! Marc and I went down together and he pulled things out while I 'listed' them and decided if anything could go upstairs. You can be sure that I ran back upstairs as soon as we were done! I was trying to figure out a good scenario where I could have the "inventory" list someplace visible where I could see it at a glance (without going in the basement! lol) and that Marc could update it himself. So this is what I came up with:
It is basically just a big ol' list that we posted on the inside of the basement door. It isn't fancy, and it barely seems organized, but it works for me. Of course, you can still use any inventory sheet like this one I mentioned yesterday.
For more ideas, check out Works for me Wednesday at Rocks in my Dryer!
8 comments:
My house is so small and I don't have a basement...maybe I should use post-it notes! :)
I have done something like this before and it does keep you from wasting things. Thanks for the reminder.
i have one cabinet that i let get out of control - the rest are a gorgeous work of oganizational art :)
I need to do this. My pantry is a disaster right now. I'm not even going to talk about my basement pantry, but you can use your imagination. :)
What a neatly appointed, color coordinated list you have there! Not sure how to make something like that work for me. Maybe I'll just admire yours for a while.
We have a crawl space under our stairs. I've tried that method....but no one crosses anything off when it's used. I'm still working on a updated version.
Be happy you don't have roaches. Yuck!!!
I should absolutely do something like this. Just today I didn't have an ingredient I needed, after being just sure it was there. A master list would be well worth the time and effort involved in creating it.
I need to do this! I have a metal cabinet in the garage that serves as my pantry. Today my son pulled out a can of pears and it said, "Best if used before August 2006!" Oops! A cleaning and inventory session is in order! Love your blog! Just found you through WFMW!
I need to do this! I have a metal cabinet in the garage that serves as my pantry. Today my son pulled out a can of pears and it said, "Best if used before August 2006!" Oops! A cleaning and inventory session is in order! Love your blog! Just found you through WFMW!
Post a Comment