Just Make Do Challenge -Day 12, 13 & 14-Food Purge & Organization

JUST MAKE DO CHALLENGE

DAY 12-Food Purge & Organization

Alright, it is time.

IF you have been sticking to the “Just Make Do Challenge” you should be seeing a change in your cabinets. There should be less clutter and you should be able to rearrange and organize a bit (even if you did at the beginning as we suggested).

In our last post I shared how I worked on the fridge and refilling our sugar, cereal and other containers from our “overstock”. Today I am going to step outside my comfort zone and show you my food cabinets (ALL of them) and the shocking discovery I made. (Yep, I am putting it out there.)

I am going to share what our cabinets looked like on December 29th and again on the 12th (exactly 14 days after our house started this project).

The Pantry Cabinet

Before

Now, I must admit this was AFTER I went through, took inventory and straightened it up.

I am not sure if you can see the difference but we DEFINITELY can.

We have added items from the overflow cabinet (which we share below) but we also GULP, went through our spices and tossed anything that expired before 2014.

(I will confess later just how old some of them were).

As you can see I made a point to label all the boxes and baskets because I found that even though my cabinets were less full my family still struggled with returning things to where they belong.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if searching for items didn’t increase our pain levels considerably.

Let’s move on to something less stressful, shall we?

The BAKING DRAWER

This is our “baking drawer”.

As you can see it was full of mixes before (photo on the right) but what you cannot see are all the red boxes (and others) that were on the overflow shelf and the icing that was in yet another cabinet.

I am happy to say that ALL our mixes and icing are now in one drawer and after they are consumed we will not be purchasing more. One of the reasons for creating the “Just Make Do Challenge” was to eliminate pre-processed foods from our diet. To be honest, only two people in our home can eat any given mix from this drawer.

I hope to replace everything in here with made from scratch supplies.

The BREAD DRAWER

Ok, so to start with it had bread, homemade croutons, popcorn salt, and baking mixes in it.

It was a place to drop just about anything.

The newly organized drawer now holds ONLY bread mixes, including the crepe mix I forgot we had.

I cannot eat homemade bread but my family loves it and I hope to replace these items with homemade bread supplies as well. (We’ll see).

ABOVE THE STOVE

I like this so much better.

We began with four cans of partially used spray and I am happy to say we have eliminated one and will eiminate a second shortly.

I moved the tea to the drink basket (so I no longer need to reach above my head to retrieve it and moved our WildTree Rubs and Sauce mixes to a shoebox and into this cabinet.

I combined open bottles of oil and removed three overstock bottles and spray to our “overflow cabinet”.

I just love the way it looks and that I can see what we have in a glimpse.

The BUFFET SECRET

Because condiments are something most of my family can have I try to keep a supply on hand (and in this cabinet).

The left is before (see the icing) and the right is after.

I decided since it is painful to bend over and dig we should put some of the condiments in a box to easily access.

Thank goodness we have big feet and I am a hoarder. That shoe box is holding four bottles of barbecue sauce, two bottles of ketchup, two bottles of mustard and two big jars of mayo (I told you we have big feet).

If the box works out we may reinforce it and decorate it a bit (or not).

THE OVERFLOW PANTRY

BEFORE

(Yes, it is in my bedroom closet…big house, small kitchen storage)

THIS was Day 1.

What you can’t see is the full size tote of snacks and bags of chips we have near by.

Hey, I like to buy on clearance with coupons what can I say?

THIS is Day 12.

Can you see the difference?

I broke the “after” photo in two so that we could get a good feel for what we have.

Remember that tote I mentioned earlier?

The Muddy Buddy snack boxes were stored in it

We consumed enough food that we could empty that tote and put those boxes on the shelf

Now for the embarrassing confession.

Don’t look if you can’t stand to see food wasted.

THIS is all the items I found that expired in 2014 or before, tasted bad (Sunny D) OR I was able to condense with another open bottle (oil, pancake syrup, etc…)

I couldn’t believe we had items that dated back to 2011 BUT I do know we don’t use spices that often due to our stomach issues and I have not worried about their expiration dates in the past.

Remember I cleaned and organized the pantry at the end of December but somehow I missed all of these.

Thank goodness for grace or I would be thoroughly kicking myself right now.

(To be honest I doubt we replace any of the expired spices as they are not items we use more than once a year, if that.)

WHAT DID YOU THINK?

Can you see our progress?

Can you see your progress?

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Tags: Declutter, eat from the pantry, food organiztion, Just Make Do Challenge, Kitchen Organization, pruge

Just Make Do January | Tina Miller | January 14, 2016 5:01 pm

Treasured Tidbits by Tina