Spring cleaning came late to the AuburnChick house. With the new method of shopping comes an interesting dilemma…where to put everything!
As you know…tasks like this inevitably grow in complexity. Read on.
My pantry was sorely in need of an overhaul…
It may not look too bad from the picture but trust me – it was.
I’ve discovered that the kids are like cows…constantly grazing. If they see something, they’ll eat it.
So, not only did I need to reorganize my foodstuff, but I also needed to get the extra stuff out of sight. And I had just the place.
My laundry room.
It’s right across from the kitchen, so it will be convenient to have extra food items stored there.
Those are the shelves in one half of the room. There are two shelves above the washer and dryer just across from these. As you can see, although things are somewhat organized, they still needed a new home.
Where to relocate this stuff? I had the perfect place…
The hall closet.
The empty shelf had been full of books. I moved them before remembering to take a picture.
Personally, I think that a pantry should be fully cleaned out every six months or so. We had half-eaten boxes of cereal, three boxes of pizza sauce with one packet left in each (I condensed these to one box), and a host of other things that needed to be thrown away.
Something else I never do is wash the square of flooring in the pantry…a minor task that got taken care of.
Now, organizing is something I actually kind-of enjoy. It’s like putting a puzzle together. I have this strange ability to see where things fit best before actually moving things. This might be a result of the practice I’ve gotten while traveling to tournaments.
The task was made easier because I didn’t have any distractions. Chicky was babysitting, and Rooster was doing a service project with the youth group.
The results…
First of all, the hall closet, which now houses office-supply stuff (folders, paper, crayons, etc.).
Notice the package of toilet paper? That’s for the kids since this closet is located beside their bathroom and between their bedrooms.
With the above items relocated, I had space in my laundry room for the overflow from the pantry…
Notice how I left room for more goodies?! I expect bountiful shopping trips in the future.
And now, the pantry!
I kept out a max of two items and put all of the extras in the newly-cleaned-off laundry room shelves…
Hopefully we’ll be able to make more efficient use of this space now, and we won’t let items go to waste.
With this big chore out of the way, I decided to reorganize the closet in the master bedroom. No small task, I assure you, so I saved the job for today.
This was the view (pre-cleaning) as you approach the closet…
This is the Mr.’s side…
And this is mine…
Oh yeah…it’s pretty bad, eh?
This was challenging and overwhelming as I pulled out one item after another and set everything on the bed.
It didn’t take me long to realize the the main contributor of the mess was the Mr.
His hanging clothes hid a myriad of black holes. Every time I stuck my hand in one, it emerged with some random item…a bag of unopened Matchbox cars…a stack of baseball cards…a knife (sheathed, of course)…and decks of cards. These are all items he collects. I wish he’d get in the habit of collecting them into neatly packed boxes!!
I couldn’t help but wonder what this man had been doing while my attention was focused elsewhere? Apparently he’d been shopping.
I condensed many items and threw away a lot of random ones. I am not a pack rat, so getting rid of things does not bother me.
My overall goal was to get as much stuff off the floor as possible. Why spend all of that money on shelving if you’re not going to use it?
The result after all of my hard work?
The Mr.’s side…
And my side…
What a busy couple of days!
Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: housework, organization | 3 Comments »
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