Fixing the pantry

The pantry in our house is not much larger than the pantry in our old house.  The shelves were almost twice as deep however.  This may sound like a good thing. In actuality, it is not.  Deep shelves equal layers upon layers of stuff and crap starts getting shoved anywhere and stuff disappears in the back.  It's kind of like a black hole.  Or rather, how I imagine a black hole to be since I have no first-hand knowledge of the subject.

So, we had few options.  We couldn't just cut the shelves to be shallower, since the archaic means with which they are mounted to the wall necessitates the shelf be present at the front and the rear.  One option was to knock down the right wall and rebuild the pantry.  This may still happen someday, but luckily I don't have to wait for that big project to be a little happier with my situation.  What we ended up doing is cutting out a squared-off "U" shape in the front which solves all problems, and gives us little shelves on the sides which is also great.  But let me assure you doing this little task is no simple feat when all you're working with is a mitre saw and some weird bendy hand saw.  You better hope you have 2 good brains and a talented husband.

So long story short, I am much happier with my pantry at the moment.  Smaller = Bigger.  Weird but true.  

Another feel good moment in this story: I eliminated a whole garbage bag worth of 3/4 empty bags and boxes of random snack crap that I have purchased and my kids have eaten once and never touched again.  I put the remainders in little ziplock snack bags that I can just throw in lunch boxes.  That way they don't have a choice - Mwuhahaha!  

And finally, now that it is possible to see what is actually in the pantry here is a list of things you don't need to go buy at the store if you live at my house since there are multiples of all of them:  powdered sugar, rice, animal/fish crackers, cereal, tea, hot chocolate, bread crumbs, marshmallows or nuts of any kind.