Anyway late last week when I was playing dance of the safety switch my life was already in chaos. The day before I woke up to a non working fridge and freezer everything had been pulled out of the pantry. Now this is a MAJOR deal, my pantry is huge and I subsequently keep lots of food in it so I don't empty this space lightly.
The thing is, since I have been preserving the fact that the shelf spacing left a whole lot of wasted space was causing frustration. Sure I had done quite a bit of preserving this year but it wasn't actually an excessive amount, still less than a years worth of pasta sauce if you calculate on one meal a week. I was running out of space. It was getting to the point I was considering boxing things into other rooms. With the size of the pantry that just shouldn't be necessary.
As the shelving is a modular system, although it seems that some of the sizing may have changed in the last couple of years, A and I decided to spend the money to buy new shelves to put in. Of course this meant for them to go in everything else needed to come out. Pulling everything out of there and packing it into boxes took over 2 hours, in the end I ran out of day.
Unfortunately I packed much of it onto the closest strong horizontal surface. Yep, that's right it went onto the top of the chest freezer. Goes to show you simply can't make a good decision sometimes.
Thankfully A came home after a long day of work on my day of frustrations and put the shelves in. His efforts then allowed me to spend much of the next day creating order from chaos. Even better once I had finished putting everything back in there is still quite a bit of space for expansion, luckily as I haven't started on the jams yet.
It may have been a stressful time but now I can look at it and truly feel gratitude for the job being complete. Between the two of us we have created a wonderful, functional space that will support our needs now and into the future. More importantly creating order from chaos brings a glow of achievement and a mental relief from clutter than is indescribable.
6 comments:
It looks awesome Belinda. We have a teeny tiny laundry, literally packed to the rafters. I recently bit the bullet, bought some modular shelving and got hubby to install it on the one spare wall - oh my God! The relief of actually being able to open the door without something falling on me, and not having to walk around the piles of buckets and things on the floor is indescribable. If I could translate that to the pantry.. well, I think I'd be on a high for a week :-)
Cheer, Julie
Thanks Julie,
I really think it should work well. I have gone from piles all over the floor to just one bucket of duck food that needs to be accessed daily. I am pretty ecstatic I have to admit.
Kind Regards
Belinda
I dread having to do these kinds of projects but I very much love the results and I inevitably feel much better afterwords and wonder what took me so long to get to it.
Good job well done - Its a lovely feeling when you achieve something no matter how long it takes.
Thanks for the info on that plant - once I read the name in your comment it all came back. They are only in a small bed and if I dead head same as I do with the Agapanthus all should be well but I'll keep my eye on them all the same.
Thanks for the invite but sorry our calendar is filled that day so we won't be able to come.
Cathy
Hi Angelina,
It seems we react to this type of situation similarly. The need to do this has been in my consciousness for about 6 months. It of course wasn't until things got too complicated to work around with "floor piles" that I actually acted.
Hi Cathy,
Thanks for considering us for the weekend. I hope you have a lovely day whatever you have planned.
Kept under a watchful eye it is a beautiful plant. In some ways I will be sad when we get to the point of dealing with ours. The problem for us is it isn't in a place where it could be considered under control and we live way too close to the bush for that to be acceptable.
Being able to easily access what you've preserved and stored is a huge stress reliever. Well done!
I'm hoping to accomplish something similar with our move. I'll have to take everything out of its storage cubby holes (scattered throughout the current house due to space limitations) anyway to move. It'll be the perfect time to choose a new pantry space and organize it.
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