January is for organizing. You’ve just dealt with the chaos of holidays and there’s this promise of a fresh start mixed with the memory of frustrated cooking and baking and the sounds of pans crashing to the ground. (At least at my house). We can’t afford to renovate our kitchen, instead I live vicariously through the home renovation shows taking sledgehammers to cabinets. We have a weirdly shaped cupboard that tried to work around a duct, and most of our bulk shelf stable food was stored in a plastic cabinet in the basement. Since we had a coat closet that was available near the kitchen, I decided to repurpose half of it as a pantry.
I like the beauty of organized spaces, especially the rainbow aesthetic of The Home Edit. Their book warned that pantry organization can be tough. I was confused by that. Unlike other areas that might have emotional attachments or guilt, organizing food seemed simpler. I was realistic, however. Our family (including me) does not prioritize putting things away, and none of us are going to organize by color. (Who has time to sort legos by color? Or buys specific colors of snack packaging to make a shelf look good?) We like abundance, and we like things to be visible. My husband got upset when I tried to cut back on the number of cooking spoons we have out on the counter. I kept that in mind when setting up the pantry. Labels. Clear spots for things. Thinking about where things usually land (well, within reason, we can’t store the oven mitts on the stovetop. No, seriously, stop doing that).
- Step one: Take it all out (step 0, clear off a place to put all the stuff you take out)
- Step Two: Sort into categories- think general, not specific. Ok, food, ha ha, maybe a little specific. Use categories that make sense to your family. Yes, talk to your family about where things go, perhaps with a mediator. Don’t make labels until you know what you are labeling. I used my Cricut to make the labels.
- Step three: Get rid of expired stuff. No, there should not be a “sentimental” category in your pantry, no matter how it “sparks joy”. What was my Dad talking about the other day? Fear of ptomaine poisoning? (I was today years old before I found it wasn’t spelled “toe-mane”) And for pity’s sake, don’t donate expired food.
- Step Four:Put things in storage in a way that you can see what you have, using shallow shelves, risers and other tricks. Not enough room? Leave the rest on your dining table and start coming up with creative meals.
- Step Five:Watch how fast your family destroys the system you spent a whole weekend on, even after you got their input. Adjust as necessary, or get a new family, your choice.
Like any other hobby, organizing can take up all your free time and a lot of money. Some people get as much enjoyment out of creating neat little rows of objects and carefully folded shirts as others do in sports or crafts. If you don’t, then it doesn’t have to be pretty, or coordinated colors, or even tidy, it just has to help you find what you are looking for, know what you own and let you go off to actual fun hobbies like watching people sledgehammer cabinets that are “not good enough to donate”.
