jumping on the bandwagon.......

Everyone whose blog I read seems to be reorganizing their kitchen and pantry spaces this month.  Time to get on the bandwagon, and see if I can make my kitchen more user friendly.  One of my big challenges is that I start projects and never finish them, so I'm going to tackle one cupboard or drawer at time- empty, clean out, re- organize, replace.  The other big challenge is not spending much if ANY money on this.  It's just not in the budget.  I also really want to try to get the kitchen painted this month... but I doubt that will actually happen.

So today, my challenge was the " pantry closet."   This space holds most of my baking supplies, many of my food storage containers, and a lot of junk.  I really need this space to work better.  Because the shelving unit in here doesn't fit snugly, lots of stuff ends up on the floor.  I also REALLY want this space to hold my recycling.  That's one task we're terrible at around here, and we need to fix that.

I took everything out of the pantry.  Unfortunately this style of rack, while "adjustable" is a serious pain to adjust, so some things needed to remain the same.  At some point, someone built a series of 2x4 shelves into the side of this closet- but they are not evenly spaced, or anything even resembling useful.  I was however, able to store a few small items and one large item on them.  I am not replacing the plastic storage containers that were housed in the second drawer. The dog is too good at  stealing and opening them, not to mention growing concerns about chemicals like BPH.  Instead, the top shelf now houses hot beverages in front, and a few large rarely used items in back, the eye level shelf has storage bags, lunch bags and plastic cups, the first basket/drawer still houses my "small" baking ingredients, like brown sugar, powdered sugar, chips , dried fruit and nuts, the second basket/drawer houses shelf stable fats, oils, vinegars and sweeteners, and overflow peanut butter and coffee.  The last shelf has flour, rice, sugar and baking mixes.

The floor has my new recycling bin for plastics and metal, and houses garbage bags and a couple of cleaning supplies.  Tomorrow: Canned goods cupboard