Last week I told you about the dangers of spring cleaning. If you missed it, here are the highlights: slippery kitchen floors from spraying furniture polish and dusting the ceiling fans/cabinets; falling from chairs as I hung up the curtains I washed; and being trapped by the king sized mattress I stupidly tried to flip myself… Yes, dear readers, spring cleaning is not for the weak!
One thing I’ve come to accept is that I no longer can have a room be “entirely clean” at one time. It isn’t possible with little kids… So, I am just tackling what I want to get done when I think I might be able to actually finish the job. LOL! This past week it was the pantry, which I had been just tossing grocery bags into until I could organize it later… (Later never seems to happen, you know?)
That’s what it looked like when I started. Scary, I know. I have a doorknob baffle on it so the kids can’t open it… Thankfully. Every time I tried to tackle this mess someone would start crying, or try to weasel past me to make a grab for something in the pantry. It was a several day process. I started out by getting some of those handy diaper boxes we seem to have tons of; I thought they would make some pretty cheap extra shelving for lighter items…
I realize you can’t put very heavy items on top, but it has made it so the shelves aren’t so crowded I can’t find things. Eventually I’ll probably buy some more wire shelving… But Mommy was trying to get this done, and that’s what I had on hand! (Besides, as long as we’re going through diaper boxes, I might as well find new uses for them!)
When I finally made my way to the bottom of the pantry I found our long-lost grill tools beneath 3 years of phone books. (Time to recycle those!) I decided to hang them up where we might actually see them and use them this year! A few screws later and…
Maybe my good kitchen tongs won’t keep getting left outside now?
Like I said, it was a several day process, but in the end, I was proud of the results…You’ll notice I used another diaper box to put all our soup we bought at Sam’s club. I have two others on the floor with extra canned goods, all labeled now so we can find what we need.
Now that that’s done, I’m off to tackle the basement…
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Julia (Everyday Mom Ideas) says
thats too funny! I like how you used the boxes to organize, very resourceful!
Visiting from SITS
morgan says
My sister is my personal organizer 🙂 She recently helped me to tackle our pantry and I was amazed how much space was really there, once it wasn’t all hodge-podged together. Good for you getting parts where you want them. I like your idea with the boxes on their side … hmmmmm …
Thanks for visiting Snapshots 🙂
Lindsay says
Looks good! I use diaper boxes, too! lol
admin says
Thanks! I have so many diaper boxes saved up that it just seems natural to use them for things. I have tons of stuff stored in them in the basement…
Arlee says
Your pantry looks great! I like all of the boxes for organization. I started following you on networked blogs!