My Pantry Vomited

All over my kitchen.

I woke up Saturday and it was raining. I mentioned it earlier, but we had about 36 hours of downpour over the weekend. I think Hurricane Ike overdid it, if you ask me. We would occasionally have a break in the weather, for a hard drizzle, but downpour was the order of the day.

So, with all the rain I decided to clean the pantry. I had been wondering for a while what was lurking in the back, and I found out. I pulled things out and set them on counters. I tried to organize them into piles of similar foods, etc. But chaos soon ensued. The counters overran.






I thought it would stop, but it just kept coming.



So now it was empty.

In the last picture, you can see one of those cheezy stackable-bin things. It seemed like a good idea when I bought it, and it actually worked well for about ten years. But it was beginning to fall apart and I was just waiting for a rainy day to ask John to add another shelf to replace it. I wish I had thought to take a before picture. Here's an empty picture; will that work?



And now, the tidier, more organized pantry;



It actually makes me feel guilty. I threw away food this weekend; things I found that had expired. People are hungry...and I'm throwing away food. I complained about the work involved in cleaning out the pantry. I whined about having to lug things downstairs to my overflow pantry. Um...I have an overflow pantry. See what I mean? I feel guilty.

But our food is more organized and I can now figure out how to use it responsibly. That counts for something!