Anyone else have ‘what’s that?’ items in their pantry?

I always vowed I would never be ‘that person’. You know… the one who has items in their panty they don’t even know they have.

This weekend, I went looking for a stir fry sauce that I KNEW I had, but couldn’t find. It started with a quick search through the shelves of my pantry, moving cans to one side and then to the other… taking out every partial bag of dried pasta I had (we won’t talk about the half bag of mini shell pasta that fell into every nook and cranny)… and finally dragging a wooden chair across the kitchen floor so I could reach the top shelf. I had to move all the cracker boxes (am I the only one who buys way too many boxes of crackers at Christmas time?) and lo and behold, do you know what I found??? Not the stir fry sauce (to avoid the suspense, it turns out I didn’t have any after all). But I did find a glass Christmas plate with a cardinal on it, a set of three ceramic kitchen canisters, two mixing bowls, a pineapple corer, some Thanksgiving napkins and (for whatever reason) a piece of dried bread (I have no answers for that one). So I guess it’s been a little too long since I looked OVER the cracker boxes to see what was stashed back there.

You know how you have those moments of surprise and embarrassment at the same time? That was me. I had no idea I even had a red cardinal Christmas plate and never once missed those matching ceramic canisters. I have no idea how long they have been up there. (I’m still not over the dried piece of bread… was it flung up there on the week I tried going Keto and I had a fit of no-carb rage?? I’ll never know. It’s been blocked from my memory.) But one thing I did know… TODAY WAS THE DAY! It was time to Purge the Pantry (PTP) and I was determined it would be Pinterest worthy once I was done. So, off to the store to get some containers.

I was almost giddy with gratitude when I stumbled across these super cute containers at the Dollar Tree. They also have them in coral and teal, but I went with the gray. I grabbed a good selection of various sizes to get me started.

Ain’t they pretty?

I emptied out every can, bag, box and loose mini shell noodle and put them in categories on my kitchen table. Things that I didn’t want (but were still good) went to the food bank pile and all those odds and ends (platters, pineapple corer and canisters) went to my kids. They’re both newly married and starting out on their own so they are happy with any hand-me-downs they can get.

Then the shelves got a good scrubbing. I contemplated putting shelving liner in, but the shelves are in great shape and the thought of the shelving paper eventually tearing or having the edges come up was more than I wanted to deal with.

I put everything into the containers and lo-and-behold, they were an exact fit on the shelves (purely by accident, but I was thrilled nonetheless).

Everything had it’s place and now the place was organized and dare I say… pretty.

I called my husband to the kitchen and gave him a tour, and strict instruction to not just shove his hot sauce into the cupboard anymore because everything now had it’s place. I felt accomplished; put together; organized; stinkin’ proud. It was Pinterest worthy and I felt like a grown up and organized adult. Not two minutes later I opened another cupboard and a large container that holds every Tupperware lid I own came crashing down on me. There were lids everywhere. So being the newly grown, organized adult I was, I grabbed two Oreos, sat on the couch and played Candy Crush. No worries though… those lids were thrown back into the cupboard well before dinner and wait for a second-wind of organizational motivation to sweep over me.