Decluttering the Pantry

I'd worked on it Thursday night, but just gave it a quick once over. Today is a deep clean:)

My pantry is a 9-cube organizer with the cloth drawers (Target).

With dh's help, I took everything off the pantry, & took out the baskets. I even took off our small microwave (we also have a full-sized one). I wiped down the top & all the shelves. I even took out everything in between the pantry & the fridge that was keeping me from opening most of the drawers.

So far, I have tossed a trash bag of expired foods. I have also put aside the microwave to send to dh's work. They already have 2, but with 15 or so men all trying to heat their meals at the same time, and only an hour lunch break (they all break at the same time), it gets backlogged. So, maybe one more will help them out a bit....just need to clean it up a bit.

I am going back in there to write down my categories of what I have (the shelves were labeled, but everything has gotten a bit jumbled up in there since labeling. So, I've already typed up a diagram to fill in the blanks, to make it easy on me to see what can go where. (I just did a 3X3 table & enlarged the squares).

I will probably be tossing more food as I go. There's lots of opened stuff that I don't know how long it's been in there:) I have already reserved the top for my "canisters" not really canisters, they are those leak-proof containers that have 4little "pop" tops to open (when I think of the name, I'll give you the website). They are great....they are square or rectangular, so they fit nicely together, rather than the round ones, that don't get close to one another.

I can't tell you how many duplicates I have of things, so the extras, plus any food we will not use will go to our local food pantry. All damaged, expired and opened foods will go to the trash.

I will also inventory what we have:)

I will report back later to let you know how I did:)