Decluttering the Pantry in 30 Minutes

We have a small pantry in a hallway that holds canned food, bottles, jars and a few bread mixes. It's a little annoying that we always have to crouch down to find anything in the pantry, but it's even more annoying when the pantry is a mess like it has been for the past few years.

Before decluttering

During decluttering

After decluttering

I took 30 minutes one weekend to go through the entire pantry, get rid of a few items, give some food away and even make lunch that day with a few items. Now it's clean and organized by type of food and how often we need an item.

Now what do I do with canned Malaysian rambutan fruit?

Decluttering the Junk Drawer

I don't care how clean or organized your home is...everyone has a junk drawer. Mine happens to be in a small, cherry hallway table that I've had since college. It's a small drawer, but is the catchall for everything that doesn't have a home. So I finally decided to spend an hour on Saturday morning cleaning out this last bastion of disorganization.

 This drawer was filled with random objects like a plastic bag of seeds for my beloved vegetable garden, some small bags of wasp attractant for our wasp traps, incense sticks, a phone answering machine manual, scissors, some light bulbs for outdoor lights, double sided tape, a few tapers, watch batteries, key tags, a flashlight, some cat hairball medicine and a cat hair brush.

Okay, after writing that, I'm starting to laugh. What a random mess!

So the cleaning process was:

1. Dump all the items out and sort them into KEEP and TOSS piles.
2. Put all the smaller items (batteries, seeds) into their own baggies to stop them from rolling around.
3. Keep like with like: the candles are grouped together as well as the pet-related items.
4. Remove as much packaging as possible so that items are easier to get to.
5. Move some items to other locations: the key tags and the wasp attractant went out to the garage and a pair of scissors went into my office.

I then cleaned the drawer with a damp rag and put all the items* I was keeping back into the drawer. The goal was to keep it all in one layer, but as you can see from the photo, the seeds just got placed on top. Oh well, it's almost spring anyway.



* One thing I had a hard time with was my dog's old collar. She passed away about two years ago and I've not had the heart to throw out her collar. I suppose I could give it to a friend's dog, or the humane shelter, but for now, I just need to hang on to it.

Tool Shed Decluttering

We have a small pump house/tool shed in our yard that has a tendency to become a catchall for all our summer projects and items. I decided this fall to clean it from top to bottom and re-organize all the tools and equipment in it. The larger items, like the lawn mower and edger seemed to take up most of the space, but once I found room for everything else, those two items fit in just fine. The key was to utilize the wall space as much as possible with tool racks, a shelf for our above ground pool items and strong hooks for the edger. An old kitchen cabinet works great for smaller tools and items.

BEFORE

 

 

AFTER