I've Actually Been Busy!

With school, family, house, Christmas, vacation, sewing, friends....

A lot of what I've been doing is cleaning out and organizing--a practically never-ending task! The Law of Entropy (the physics principle that everything progressively becomes more disordered) is working very well at my home.

One thing I did was organize the pantry.

I was too embarressed to photograph the pantry "before". Out pantry is under the stairway--and a bit like a big, black hole. That Black Hole just sorta sucked stuff into a big mess at the rear of the pantry.

We had some old wire shelving that was just too bulky to get around and actually access the very back of the pantry. So first thing I did was get some Elfa "cabinet size" bins. The drawer-type bins slide out to access the stuff in them. They were expensive (even on sale at the Container Store), but they sure are great!

I took everything out of the pantry and cleaned up, threw out, re-lined shelves, put up spice racks (more on that later), hung some new shelves (carefully measuring to get my stuff to fit).

I put the bread machine where it is easy to access--

I hung up our aprons and Ed's chefs hat--

Little trays from Ikea contain any spills from syrups or oils--
And best of all, the spices are out of a deep drawer where we can find them. They are even alphabetized! The racks are from Ikea.

And a newly-sewn plastic bag holder hanging on the over-the-door rack to complete the overhaul!