Out with the old; in with the new!

I've been cleaning and organizing.

  A. Lot.  

The target of the most recent purges has been the kitchen.  What with all the dietary changes, eating whole, green foods, etc.  I really wanted to get rid of all the crap that had accumulated in my pantry and refrigerator.  I am embarrassed to tell you what some of the expiration dates of things in the fridge were... um...  suffice it to say that some condiments had been in there since Bush was in office.  The pantry... even though the dates were far older, I don't feel so bad about.  I mean, really, the shelf life of a twinky is like 30 years or some shit... so a can of soup couldn't be THAT out of date.  Yeah.  Found some stuff with exp dates of 1998.  For real.  LOL  Scary thing is that it was a giant bag of white flour.  I guess it's a good thing that I didn't have any need to use white flour in all those years... at least not a giant bag worth.  We won't even talk about the crisco I found lurking in the back of one of the shelves....  yuck!

I found crap that I can't imagine why I bought in the first place.  I think I had 2 boxes of white minute rice... both opened and partially used.  Of course, one of them had been shoved into the blind corner of the pantry (in my defense), but still.  Obviously, this pantry has been sorely neglected for well over 10 years.  How sad is that? 

It's sort of a walk-in situation and it's been full of all sorts of stuff ever since we moved in.  All the plastic bags that came from the market with the intent of taking them back in for recycling (which I just did... and for the record, I've used reusable shopping bags for quite a long time now.. lol) were all over the place.  All the small appliances that didn't fit on our limited counter space or small cabinets were there.  Serving dishes, crock pots, bread maker, rice cooker, blenders, food processor - you get the picture.  The trash is also in there along with brooms, mops, dust pans, etc. and all of our dry goods.  OH, and all 3 of our recycling bins were stacked up in there... just adding to the mess.  Now, this is only a 4 foot long area that is 3 feet wide at the *widest* part (the door is on an angle).  It was a veritable clusterf*ck of a space.  You could barely get in there to reach the things that we regularly use (which were conveniently placed at the front of the easily reached shelves).  No one ventured past that.

I finally have enough of the rest of my life in order that I guess I thought I could tackle the dreaded Pantry.  And tackle it, I did.

Now, not only is all the food in my pantry edible, it's also good for you.  Everything else went in the trash (as it was expired).  I eliminated several small appliances that we never use and some serving dishes and other misc. stuff that just needed to go.  (Goodwill cheers when I drive up!)  And the recycle bins found a new home in the garage.  Now it's nice and clean and you can actually walk in it!  Whoo hoo!

Since I was on a roll, I organized 7 of my cabinets too.  More things for the kids if they want them... or off to goodwill with it too.  The only 2 things left are the cabinet with our glasses and the awful tupperware cabinet ( a blind corner cabinet from hell).  I've found a nice organizer for it and will tackle it as soon as the organizer is installed.  (YAY!)

With all this done, I actually have space for the juicer and my tea pot and our fresh veggies and fruits out where we can see them...   Ahhhhh  It feels wonderful to be clean and organized.

Freeing up this stagnant energy feels Soooo good.  I can feel that things have shifted and we are open to better things coming in!  Bring it on!!