30 WEEKS PREGNANT
Organize Your Pantry and Laundry Room
This week, you can • Clean out your pantry
• Organize your pantry for ease of retrieval and maximum use of the space
• Streamline your laundry room or laundry area
• Create a shopping list in Excel and post it
• Discuss the chores that will keep these areas organized
WHEN
IT COMES to food stockpiles at home, people seem to be divided into two
groups. The first are what I’ll call the “fly by the seat of your
pants” folks. They wing it in the kitchen and pretty much in life. Why
spend time making a shopping list, they muse, when you can live
dangerously and never know exactly what’s in the pantry? They find
themselves at the grocery store several times a week. “Gosh, I hope I
got everything I need” is their mantra. You hear them chant it to the
cashier at checkout. Later you can hear their screams as they discover
that the missing ingredient for tonight’s impromptu pasta primavera is
. . . pasta!
In the other group are the “I
gotta be prepared” guys and gals. They shop once a week with a list and
they never, ever enter a food store when they are hungry. Frequently,
they are recipe collectors. The world is full of food adventures they
hope to have one day. There isn’t much to say about this group. They
are rather dull, really, always saving money, time, and energy. The
latter have an easier time in the world in general, and certainly when
it comes to eating at home. However, membership in the former group is
huge. Which group are you in?
DAYS ONE AND TWO: WHAT’S IN YOUR PANTRY?
For
our purposes, I’m going to help you organize a walk-in pantry. I
realize not everyone has one, but you can easily adapt the tips and
tricks to your situation. Even a small area devoted to food storage
should be an orderly space. In fact, you’d think it would be easy to
organize and maintain. But there is a pantry gremlin who routinely
invades the space, making it almost impossible to find anything. If you
create and maintain food categories, however, the gremlin is guaranteed
to move on to a new home. He’ll think yours is a big bore.
Let’s
start with another speed elimination. Depending on how you are feeling
at this moment in your pregnancy, you might have to enlist the aid of a
friend. Again the key in choosing your assistant is that he or she be
someone willing to do your bidding. They can offer an opinion but they
are not welcome to take over and run the show. I’ll let you decide if
your mother-in-law is right for this assignment.
Set
a timer for twenty minutes. Peer into your pantry and pretend you’ve
never seen it before. Going shelf by shelf, I’d like you to look for
items you can discard: food items that have expired, items you know you
will never use again (you might be able to donate them to a food bank
or shelter depending on the packaging), and items that don’t belong in
a pantry. A good example would be your cleaning supplies: Chemicals
shouldn’t be stored near food. Even in the supermarket they have their
own aisle. Another example: Do you keep kitchen equipment or serving
pieces here? If you don’t have any other place to keep these items and
they aren’t robbing you of food storage space, you get a pass. OK,
ladies and gentlemen, start your speed elimination engines and meet me
back here in twenty minutes.
I don’t want to
continue until you clean up any mess that was created during this
activity. Bag or box the expired food and take it out to the trash. Bag
or box any food items you wish to donate. Place them in your car or
call a friend and ask him to make the delivery for you. Do you have to
move any items to the dining room or the garage? When you organized the
kitchen, did you make room for some of the cooking tools you had stored
in the pantry? Be sure you tend to any items that need to be moved at
this time.
The next step is a bit tricky
because I can’t see the size of your pantry or how much counter space
you have in your kitchen. But it’s rare not to be able to take the next
step with ease and a little elbow grease. I’d like you to take out
what’s in the pantry but not in a wild frenzy. Please organize the
items into categories on your counters. You need to know how many cans
of soup you have, how much pasta there is, and whether you need any
tomato sauce.
After that phase is complete,
the pantry needs a good cleaning. This poor area usually gets swept and
wiped down on move-in day and then ignored. Take a damp cloth to the
shelves and clean the floor. Clearly your helper has to be a good sport
to do this for you! While she’s doing that, I have an assignment for
you.
Kitchen Tools to the Rescue
Once
you see your food in categories on your counter, you may be amazed. Who
knew you had twelve cans of chicken soup hidden in the debris? Did you
remember those lasagna noodles you got a month ago at the gourmet food
shop? And what about that Texas hot sauce you picked up in the Dallas
airport last Christmas when you were changing planes? I’m going to give
you the tools, tips, and tricks I use to organize a pantry. You won’t
lose track of food ever again. Read through this list. If you’re near a
computer, check the items out online. Create a shopping list so you and
your helper can head to the store right after lunch. It doesn’t take
long to put the puzzle back together when you have the right tools.
Remember
the shelf dividers I suggested for your closet? They can work wonders
in a pantry. You want to be sure the categories stay divided.
To
that end, label the shelves. No one needs to remember the setup; all
they have to do is read. When relatives come after the baby is born,
you want them to know exactly where to place things; otherwise today is
an exercise in futility.
There
are wonderful containers called grid totes at The Container Store that
work well to hold different types of food. I suggested you research
them when we were looking at the area under the kitchen sink. They are
easy to grab, come in two sizes and many colors, and are easy to keep
clean.
What would you store in these totes?
All of those wonderful food packets people collect like instant salad
dressing, mix for Sloppy Joes and instant soups can be tucked into a
small, square tote. Otherwise they tend to pop up on every shelf like
weeds. Do you have small packages of food? The long grid tote will hold
them nicely. Very often multiple food items like Ramen noodles come
packaged together. Once the packaging is torn open and one is removed,
it becomes a free-for-all to keep the others intact. Your grid tote
will prevent that from happening.
Many types
of pasta come in bags rather than boxes. If you don’t corral them, the
spirals, the shells, the bow ties, and the tubes will have tumbled on
top of each other like puppies in a dog pile. You get the idea!
If
you have a large pantry and prefer the look of baskets you can use them
instead. Or simply integrate them holding items like onions or garlic.
Shelf
creators give you different levels so that your cans of soup or
vegetables are easier to spot. They come in different materials and
different widths. Baby food (should you elect not to make your own)
works perfectly on these shelf creators, as do cat and dog food cans.
It’s the handiest tool in the pantry!
If
you have items like flours and sugars that languish on a shelf after
you open them, do invest in airtight containers to keep them fresh. If
they are used infrequently and you have a pantry, this is the ideal
place to store them rather than a countertop, unless of course you have
designer canisters and feel they add a decorative touch to the room.
The Container Store as well as the kitchen department of your local
home store will carry a variety of types and styles. Rubbermaid makes
many of these containers.
Foods like flour
and nuts are ripe for pantry moths and other pests, even in sealed
packaging. Keeping these foods in glass containers will prevent this
problem. Transfer the inviting items to glass the minute you get home
from the store and those moths won’t be your new tenants! Trust me:
It’s very tricky to evict them once they move in. Another trick is to
place flour and bread in the freezer for 15 minutes; that kills any
potential moths. In fact, if you have a large separate freezer, you can
store the items in the freezer rather than on a pantry shelf and take
them out on an as-needed basis.
Design Your Pantry
It
may not be decorative in your mind, but a well-organized pantry will
not only look different, it will feel very different from a
tossed-together one. You’d be surprised how attractive, restful, and
enticing the space can be. (By the way, do you have a light in the
pantry? Be sure the bulb is bright enough for you to see. Very often
I’m in a home where the bulb burned out and no one bothered to replace
it.) Here are the most common food categories I see:
• Pastas
• Tomato products: cans of whole tomatoes, sauces, paste, and others
• Soups
• Vegetables
•
Flavor enhancers like olive oil, vinegar, salad dressings, mustards,
salt and pepper (large containers), and those packets I discussed above
• Side dishes or items for garnish like olives, chutneys, capers, and salsas
• Cereals and pancake mix
•
Snack items like popcorn, chips (be sure you have a supply of clips to
keep those bags closed; otherwise the contents get stale), crackers,
and candy
• Fish (cans of tuna, sardines, and salmon are common)
• Water
• Sodas
•
Paper products like paper towels and napkins (Keep toilet paper in the
bathroom area or the linen closet if you don’t have a shelving unit in
the garage. TP isn’t the right visual for a pantry, if you catch my
drift.)
What categories would
you add from your personal stash of food items? And which would you
eliminate as not being a part of your diet?
As
you look at your categories, which are the ones you most frequently
use? Those should go toward the front of the pantry shelves. You want
to be able to reach in and grab. Items that are less frequently
accessed can live in the back or on the shelves behind the door. You’d
be surprised how much time you can save over the course of a year if
you can just reach in and grab what you need!
Keep
sodas and water in separate areas on the floor. Liquid is heavy and you
don’t want to tax a shelf and hear a big crash in the middle of the
night, above all after Baby arrives.
The top
shelves, especially if they are very high, are great for party items
you rarely use, like the Fourth of July margarita mix or the large bag
of holiday cookie cutters that were clogging up a drawer. You can tuck
your new two-step step stool in the pantry or kitchen corner
(traditionally there’s a space between the refrigerator and the cabinet
closest to it) to keep these items at your fingertips.
Once
you have your battle plan and a list of organizing tools to pick up,
you’re on the home stretch. If you can’t shop today, put items away in
the spot you wish them to reside. It will take a second to pop them
into or onto containers in a few days when you have made the purchase.
Placement is the most important end result for today’s endeavors.
Unless you have a palatial kitchen with a huge walk-in pantry, you
should be able to accomplish this task in one or two days max.
