I am starting on a journey to get organized – my life and my home.  I know things will be more peaceful once I reach my destination.  I am always looking for ways to cut the clutter and remove the chaos.  I did one simple thing in my kitchen that has really helped me.  Now if you are super organized, you’ll probably think, “been there, done that”.  But, I have to think (or should I say I would like to think) there are others out there that also struggle with organization.

I don’t have any of those cool kitchen cabinets that have the shelves that slide out so you can see everything you have at a glance.  I have a big, deep cabinet with two shelves that I use as additional pantry space.  Here I store my canned goods, chicken broth, cake mixes, baking products, oil, etc.  I was really getting sick of having to pull out everything to see if I had an item I needed for one of my recipes.  Very time consuming and very aggravating.  And sometimes, just because I was lazy, I would just go out and buy the item rather than face having to search the abyss. 

The simple thing I did was to clean out my cabinet and make a list on a sheet of notebook paper of everything I had.  I did it in pencil.  I put a number in front of the item to indicate how many I had.  For instance, 3 cans of corn, 2 brownie mixes, 1 can of artichoke hearts, and so on.  I also organized the cabinet a bit.  I grouped items, like putting all the corn on one side, putting all the baking stuff on the bottom shelf, etc.  When I shop and buy new items, I just erase the old number and add a new number – for instance, now I have 5 brownie mixes – because they were on sale, and because of my addiction to chocolate.  And, if I buy a completely new item, I just add a new line on my paper.  I keep the paper right inside that cabinet and pull it out when I do my meal planning to see if I have an ingredient or need to buy it.

This simple task of writing it down on a list that is ready and available for me to review has moved me one step closer on my journey to complete organization.  I also plan to do this for my closet pantry and for my freezer.  I have one of those side-by-side refrigerator/freezers and I really waste a lot of things, because I forget I have something in there.  When I tackle that task, I plan to add an “expiration date” column.  I hope you find this helpful.