You know the answer, yes? That’s right, you need to clean out those cupboards that are the handy stash spots for all the canned goods, bags of rice, boxes of pasta, dribbles and dabs of baking chocolate, spices, baking soda, five types of flour, etc. and etc. And the other point: sort the items as you take them out of the cupboard, then consolidate, toss, donate and store properly.
The Before Picture – This is the Cupboard with All the Plastic Storage Containers
I’m on vacation this week and decided it was time to clean up. We have been here two years and stuff had migrated, gotten lost, gotten forgotten. I cleaned up the cupboards with the pasta and canned goods last week. We had:
- 3 boxes of thin spaghetti
- 2 boxes angel hair (which we don’t care for)
- 3 boxes fettucine
- 2 boxes linguini
- 2 open and 2 full boxes of lasagna noodles. I think we moved one of the open boxes here.
- 3 boxes of twisty pasta
- 1 box of shells
- 3 boxes of elbow macaroni
- 1 box of tiny macaroni
- 4 bags of brown rice, all open
- 2 bags of white rice, both open
- 5 bags of coconut (we use maybe 2 bags a year)
Plus lots and lots of cans and other stuff. I shoved everything on the counter tops into one tiny space, leaving plenty of room for the stuff in the cupboards. As I took it out of the cupboards I sorted it. Canned vegetables here, pasta mountain there, coconut on the other side with the baking supplies. It took me an hour to take everything out of four deep (and messy) shelves and sort it.
Canned Goods on the Top Shelf, Mounds of Pasta on the Second, Now All Neat
The next day I cleaned off the shelves and a good friend came over and fixed the tracks so they slid right. Then it was time to divide the stuff, put the surplus either downstairs in the pantry cupboard or in a bag for the food pantry, throw away the really old stuff (open lasagna noodles, sesame seeds from 1984, pudding mix from the 1990s), consolidate. The four bags of brown rice are now two bags.
Then neatly replace the goods back on the shelves, empty the garbage, and take the surplus to church.
Today it was time to do the baking cupboards. I dreaded this because we have tons of weird baking stuff that Dave bought to make something and it was scattered through several cupboards. (Remember the coconut. It was on three different shelves.) Plus all that powdered sugar and flour makes a mess if it gets out.
It actually wasn’t too bad. Yes, we have ten boxes of baking chocolate, not counting the semi sweet (three boxes), German (one box), milk (one box) and white (one box). True, we had two open boxes of baking mix (used once a year to make quiche if we have left over ham), two open packages of baking cocoa, two open baking powder, two open brown sugar, corn flakes and two bags of rye flour.
The After Picture – Even the Baking Cupboard is Clean
After straightening it up, putting the extra chocolate and flour in the downstairs pantry, we have a much neater place. There is actually a good reason for most of the duplicates and extras. The baking chocolate was from a super close out sale and we use lots of it. (Although the white chocolate and milk chocolate are puzzlers.) The smaller containers – baking powder, cocoa – tend to get shoved behind and missed, then the baker opens a new one. I’ll take messy cupboards with home baked goodies over perfectly neat cupboards and no baked goods any day.
Next up: Tackle that cupboard full of plastic storage containers!
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