Shelfish Behavior

I was feelin' punny...my apologies.

My kitchen is what I refer to as a "two butt kitchen."  Honestly, you're kinda crowded if you've got two butts in there.  (Of course it's not as crowded with our two smaller butts as it used to be when we had bigger motors in the back of our Hondas.)  There's no way I can fit all of my baking and supplies in the kitchen so we have an overflow shelf in the basement.  It was looking BAD.  See...

Yeah.  Craptastic fo' sho and certainly not inspiring for me to want to get in the kitchen.  The Mr will take stuff down and put it any ol' place.  I keep stuff upstairs until I can "get to" rearranging the shelf and therefore it stays upstairs stacking up until the Mr dumps it down there or looks at it woefully.  When the Mr was trying to ward off an attack of fruit flies from the bananas, I decided there was no time like the present to get the shelves in order.  I went through everything and I checked expiration dates.  I was kind of ticked because some of the things I'd bought not too long ago were long expired meaning they were either expired (Masa) or close to it (whole wheat flour) when I bought them.  So note to self (and to you all)...always check the expiration before you buy.  I was glad to see I didn't have to throw out more than a grocery bag full of stuff and that was more due to the size of the items to be tossed like a box of cereal, a bag of Masa, etc.

I grabbed those bamboo shelves I was crushing on from The Container Store so that I could utilize more vertical space on the bigger shelves.

I used both shelves on the two bigger shelves.  The top shelf is like my "supply" shelf.  It's got all of my flours on the top bamboo shelf and underneath them is powdered sugar, brown sugar, peanut and cookie butter, etc.  In front is a loaf pan doubling as a "chip bin."  I always have stray bags of chips of all kinds from cinnamon to dark chocolate to peanut butter so it's nice to have them all in one spot.  In front of that is Nutella, oats, raisins and stuff.  On the right is my 8 cans of pumpkin (that wasn't a typo), cake mixes for cupcakes or cake balls/truffles, a blondie mix from Trader Joe's I can't wait to try and some of the Mr's dressings.

The second shelf is like my "special projects/spices" shelf.  I try to group together things I know I need for upcoming recipes so I can grab and go.  I've got holiday flavors like Candy Corn Oreos, ginger snaps, Wilton Melts and stuff like that.  The black bowl has all of my spices, extracts and mini cupcake liners.  Beside that is a container that I stacked all of my cupcake liners in so they didn't get all warped out of shape.

The last shelf has all of my cookie cutters and sprinkles in the bin on the left with my new cooling rack ready to go for Christmas cookies this year and beside that stuff to pop our own popcorn.  On top of the shelf is my mini crock pot, parchment paper and press n' seal Christmas wrap and beside that are all of our Hawaii goodies that were scattered all over but are now in one spot so we can grab them when we want them.  Then on the right is my bigger crock pot with Christmas Gladware bowls for treats at holiday time when I have to transport them to gatherings.

I didn't get to the very top shelf but it won't take much to get together.  Crossing this off the list is allowing me to breathe a bit.  It was just one of those swirling things in my head that was weighing me down mentally and depressing to look at because that's my background when I work out.  So, yay for forward progress!

What's on your to do list that you've been putting off?

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