Rainy Day Project – Organizing the Pantry

When you don’t have to get out in nasty weather, why do so? That was how I felt today as the rain began lightly, then increased, and has been in that light-heavy pattern for hours. (Yes, cold weather readers, I know some of you might be willing to trade 73 degrees and rain for whatever you have today.) My work load is a little less than usual and while I always need to clean up files of one form or the other, that was something  couldn’t face. What else was on the when-I-get-some-spare-time list? Ah, the pantry.

If you followed the blog when we remodeled, you’ll recall moving and enlarging the pantry was one of my goals. It certainly isn’t anywhere near the size I would like, but it’s definitely larger than what we had. However, like everything else in the house, we use vertical space and for we “shorties”, that pretty much presents a daily challenge. So, despite the pantry being very well organized originally, it didn’t take long for the reachable space to be less organized as I would jam more into those spots rather than unfold the stepstool. (Part of the pantry design hubby did for me was to accommodate room for the fold-up stepstool.) Enough, I decided today. Take the stepstool out and get this place back in order. No, I don’t label things, but there is logic to the arrangement and hubby and I are fairly compatible with our ideas of “logical arrangement”.

As for what we keep in the pantry, we follow the rule of having the essentials you need and something you can make at least two meals out of using only items from the pantry. That is two meals in addition to soup. And yes, when I say soup, I mean keeping the cream ones that are used as ingredients in other dishes. We rarely eat pasta marinara, but if we somehow found ourselves without meat, we have that as a fallback. Rice and beans is another option.

How about it? What staples do you always keep stocked?