Reorganization

One of the things I did this weekend was organize the area we call the pantry annex. (Oops, first I typed panty annex. What is my subconscious up to?) Our house was built in the 40's with a dinky kitchen and in the 50's-ish they built an addition. I have no idea who "they" are but I have some issues with the way they did things.

The good part is they opened up the back of the house and made a giant dining room and kitchen with an island and a giant laundry room with a half bath.

I'm guessing that's when they built the shop, as well, and this is a giant unfinished room with all our junk: camp gear, boxes we haven't thrown away, boxes we're keeping on purpose, paint cans, gardening stuff, deep freezer, Pam's 80's hairband novel in a box, etc.

The bad part is that the kitchen was designed by monkeys. No human being would have thought that this set-up was adequate. The cupboards and drawers seem endless but when you start actually using them you notice that after you put a spatula and a wooden spoon in one drawer, you can barely close it. One saucepan and the shelf is full.

There is no real pantry or broom closet. We keep pantry type items on some shelves in the kitchen and more in the laundry room.

The annex is usually where we just throw stuff and cram it in and then when we're looking for something we hope we can find it back there.

I took everything off the shelves, wiped it all down and then categorized. We had 8 cans of pinto beans and 7 cans of fire-roasted chiles. But only 1 chicken broth, 1 red kidney bean and 1 garbanzo bean. We have two jars of applesauce that I canned in Fall 07 and a can of bamboo shoots that I bought for a particular recipe and have since decided I don't really like bamboo shoots. I guess I could give them to the foodbank but that just seems cruel.

There are tons of other items I'm not mentioning here. While I was doing all this I wanted to show Bob where I'd rearranged a few items because he's not good at looking for things. He was surprised to see the box of oatmeal and the two boxes of granola bars that had been out of sight and he'd totally forgotten about.