Organizing the Pantry (again)

It seems like just yesterday I was posting about organizing the pantry. HERE is the old post about just such a thing. Actually it was a little over a year ago. I have organized it since but nothing too crazy.

This time I pulled out all the stops shelves. The house was originally designed to have the laundry area where the pantry is. Strange enough, with an open floor plan that means in my dining room. The lovely people who first built my house (not me) changed the idea and had the laundry area moved into the 4th bedroom and the bedroom redesigned into a laundry/huge extra random closet. The old laundry area then became the pantry.

This isn't horrible except the shelves are so far apart you can't seem to utilize the space well. Honestly, it totally stinks!

Three huge shelves just doesn't cut it. Look at all that extra room between shelves! Time for a change!

Step 1: Clutter your entire house kitchen with all the things from your pantry while you demo. Do it during something fun like on a Wednesday night after church and two days before something major (like report cards due at school). :o)

Step 2: Grab your hammer! This is the really fun part, DEMO! Take out all your pent up aggression issues out on the shelves.

Step 3: Stand back and realize you didn't think about patching holes or painting and don't really have time for it. Ooppssyyy!

Step 4: Tell yourself you will paint behind there later but right now this has to be put back before your family strings you up.

Step 5: Begin shelf reassignment. We had some old shelves we had purchased from Lowes to use in that extra closet that we also ripped out (more on that later) and had placed these shelves and the track system in the garage. They were quickly re-purposed.

Step 6: Cut down the 2nd shelf so that you can have one seamless shelf the entire pantry wide.

Step 7: Quickly put everything back and call it a day.

It still isn't 100% perfect because I just can't find a solution for bagged items that are large. What do you do when you snag a great coupon deal and get 6 bags of Chex Mix or Chips?

I was able to put many small items into these great containers I bought at Wal-Mart. They were about $12-$14 each but I saved so much room by unboxing items I purchased from Amazon and placing them into the drawers. Each drawer then got a label from my label maker so my husband kids knew where everything was. I was even able to make room for my extra candles (they are in the left container, bottom two drawers), my plastic silverware and extra napkins (bottom drawer on the right organizer) and all those annoying drink packages and tea bags.

With the extra shelves and the items more compact, I was able to bring my cookbooks into the pantry where they freed up an entire 12 inch cabinet in my kitchen to put dish towels and extra ziploc baggies.

I will be posting more on these cute glass jars tomorrow! So what do you think of the pantry now? Is it horrible that I didn't patch and paint first?

The Greasy Range Hood and Hard Water Bath Tub Stains NO MORE

We have a stainless steel range hood from Broan. It was an expensive one from Lowes we purchased a few years ago. We are now looking into getting a stainless steel microwave for the spot but until our budget affords it we must keep our other range hood looking nice.

I have NO idea what in the world causes this but the top gets this sticky, thick greasy looking dust that does not come off! This is after I ran a water covered cloth over it and look at what is still left. Disgusting!

I decided to break out the big guns and use my Scour Off! I love this stuff. It doesn't smell like toxic fumes and it works wonders. My oldest daughter stood on a step stool next to me to watch what I was doing and I wasn't scared once of what she was smelling. I even use my fingers to apply the scour off.

I let it sit for about 20 minutes. I ran off to work on the bathroom hard water stain while I was thinking about it. Here is the before.

No matter what we do the hard water drips out of our faucet in our master bath. It is SO gross to see.

I spread some Scour Off with my fingers and wrapped a wash cloth around the faucet so it wouldn't drip on the scour off. Then I worked on picture molding in the dining room for a few minutes and then OOPS remembered the Scour Off in the kitchen.

Went back and used a wet paper towel to wash off the scour off. Here is a during picture.

Then I took my Basic H2 (degrease formula) and sprayed and then wiped with a clean towel.

Voila!

The gunk is gone!

Now back to the bathroom. I washed off the scour off with my wash cloth (that was wet from the dripping faucet) and ...

It is also gone! Yeah!

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A Snow Day, the Death of a Dell, Diy Continued, a Little Girl's Closet and Crayon?

The title says it all! I've had one of those days. If you haven't noticed the Dell died.  It actually kicked the bucket last night but I was in denial until this morning. The hard drive is currently at our local computer repair shop so they can rip some important files off of it but the rest of it is toast. Adobe wanted to update last night so my husband let it reboot except it didn't. The fan came on but it just wouldn't start. We left it alone all night and came back in the morning to try again (after our snow day was called, YEAH!) and it was still dead. So my brother took out our hard drive and my husband and brother took it to the shop.

Thank God we had our $1,000 emergency fund (we are following Dave Ramsey) so we took some of it out and purchased a new CPU. We got a Emachines for $339 after tax at Best Buy. I didn't think that was too bad.

Then my brother wanted some furniture I was getting rid of so he decided to work on some DIY projects for me. When we redid the kitchen we never finished fixing the soffit since I changed the layout of the cabinets. It was missing drywall in a few spots. My brother started in the corner and worked his way around.  Out of the 3 spots, one is ready to sand and prime, one is still 2x4's, and one is still being debated.

Yes the top picture has a cobweb. We are keeping it real.

I forgot to take a picture of this drywalled and mudded. I'll have to do that when we finish the 2nd box later this week. Sorry.

Next came Emma's closet which lets just say is a disaster upon itself. Here is her closet makeover (still currently in progress)  These are the BEFORE pictures. Dear Lord you can't even open the door!

I took everything out and made a huge pile. The cat just stared at me. I think she is mocking me.

That's not all of it either. I took pity on you and didn't show you what was still on the top of the closet or on the shelves. You might see part of those later.

I moved in her dresser/ changing table from when she was a baby. It fit perfectly! Here is what went inside of that.

Shoes inside the cabinet.

Top shelf: sneakers
Middle shelf: dress shoes
Bottom shelf: sandals and etc.

I brought the two important things into the closet clean/organize situation. My water in my reusable 24 oz. cup and my Basic H2 all purpose cleaner. Those drawers were just gross!

Any money found in the closet redo was put into Emma's Save envelope from her Financial Peace Jr. kit.

Here is her top drawer. It holds t-shirts.  It is now labeled.

The middle drawer holds long sleeve shirts. It is also labeled :o)

The next drawer has shorts and jeans. It is also labeled.

The bottom drawer has long pants.

Now that the dresser was finished I had to tackle the mound of dresses, sweaters, jumpers and skirts on the bed.

I had to tear out two shelves that the builder put in in order to hang her long clothes. She still has one shelf at the bottom for her doll babies and her horses and stable went underneath the shelf on the floor.

 Emma still has some things to go through on top of the dresser but we put her craft kits and extra toys neatly in their boxes and stacked on top of the closet until we can decide what to do. We are 95% finished with the closet.

So while I was working in the closet I left Chris to watch the girls. I come back out to find THIS on the kitchen table!

Yes that is CRAYON on my kitchen table. So... I grabbed my Shaklee Basic H2 (degreaser formula) and sprayed.

The flash went off so bright it looks like the crayon is already gone. I promise you I am no magician it was still there. I used my microfiber cloth and just rubbed it away.

Okay so NOW it is gone. Too bad it couldn't take care of those scratches...ewwww.

So that was my Tuesday. Nuts right?



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