What does a mom do when her only child is away from home at camp for the first time ever and your husband is busy trying to find a new job? Get busy painting/organizing of course. I have found that the best way for me to best deal with my emotions is to get busy with projects. And there was one project that I had been putting off for far too long. I decided that while Penny was away to her Thai/Vietnamese Heritage Camp, I would tackle what I call the "Baking Pantry". I couldn't get a good picture of Penny at camp since, of course, she's much too old for mom to constantly be taking pictures of her. So, I know it's not as much fun, but I'll have to show you what occupied my time while she got to play with kids at camp as a counselor. Here is my beautiful finished pantry....
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| Amazing New Pantry |
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| Amazingly Ugly Before Picture |
There were several reasons I wanted to take on this project. First of all, the entire inside of the pantry, including the ceiling, top shelf and wood molding on the bottom were all painted bright orange from the '70s. And, of course, this was not a pretty orange. The walls were all scraped up and the black paint was peeking through on the top shelf. It had originally been a utility closet. However, someone had installed brackets with makeshift shelves, which were basically very ROUGH wood. Secondly, I had the problem of too many things just getting shoved up in the small space, to the point of things falling out when I tried to retrieve items off of the shelves. Besides that, I noticed my onions and potatoes kept going bad so quickly. So, I read an article, online, that said that the two give off different gases which counteract each other and actually accelerate spoilage. Another thing that speeds up the spoiling process is placing onions in a plastic bag, which is exactly what I had been doing. So, due to these many reasons, I decided it was time to start over with this pantry.
The first step was to empty everything so that I could prime over the ugly, old, orange paint.
After priming and painting, here's what the pantry looked like. An improvement, I would say, don't you think so?
Now, the next step was to cover the rough wooden shelves with shelving contact paper.
After that, I still had enough contact paper left to cover a couple of shoe boxes to corral stuff that needed to be better organized inside the pantry.
Then, I had to decide which items were going to stay in the pantry and which should be moved to other locations. Since I live in a smaller, cottage-style brick home with limited storage space, I sometimes have to be creative in finding good storage places for all of the items in my home. I'm glad that we even have some cupboards in the garage, which I use to store some of my kitchen items that don't fit in my kitchen cupboards. One thing I decided should be moved were the baking staples, such as flour, sugar, corn starch, etc. I decided that it would make more sense to have those items closer to the counter top and oven. So, in order to place them there, I needed to remove some dishes from the cupboard where the baking staples were finding a new home.
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| Before |
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| After |
That was not the best "Before" and "After" shots, because I had already removed some of the dishes in the "Before" shot. Well, where was I now to place the dishes I had removed? The ones that we use more frequently found a new home in the cupboard across from the dishwasher, where other plates and bowls were located. The other advantage of this new spot for the dishes is that Penny can easily reach them. See, I was thinking of her while she was away. I figured I could just move out the George Foreman grill, since we don't use it all of the time.
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| Before |
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| After |
The ones that we hardly ever use got a new home in either the cupboard above the fridge, which is hard to reach, or in the hutch that I inherited from my great aunts. I keep the hutch in the sun porch, since our dining room is too small to house such a piece of furniture. Sorry, no pictures of those neglected dishes in their new homes!
The next step was to reorganize the items that I did want to keep in the pantry. I started putting like items together in boxes, sometimes further organizing them into smaller, plastic containers within the boxes I had covered in contact paper. I also placed them on the shelves before putting the shelves back in the pantry, so I would have an idea of how many items would fit on each shelf before actually placing them inside the pantry, again. I also got out my label maker and labeled everything. I found a plastic container that had, at one time, held chocolate chip cookie dough. It was now re-purposed to hold my various kinds of chocolate chips. You see, I did not need to go out to any store to get new containers. They were all things I already had on hand. Here is my organizing work...
By removing both the onions and the baking staples, I now had more room to house other items in my baking pantry. I knew exactly what I wanted to store there. I was growing very tired of getting down on my knees and having to practically crawl inside a far back corner spot under the kitchen sink to reach my baking sheets, which were haphazardly thrown back in there, along with the popcorn containers. Now, I can actually reach them easily within reach in my newly spiffed-up baking pantry. So, here are some more "Before" and "After" pictures of the various shelves in my baking pantry.
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See more pictures below. Don't ask me why there's a big gap of space in between my pictures. Hey, I'm no professional blogger. I'm just doing this for the fun of it!
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Before
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In that last picture, you'll see that I added a plastic set of drawers. These I labeled with categories for my hot pads, kitchen towels and dish rags. They used to be all shoved in a bottom drawer together next to the stove. I decided that it would be more convenient to have them near the table, (where the baking pantry is located), so that when it's time to set the table we can easily grab the hot pads and throw them on the table. And, since the bottom drawer was emptied, I now have a designated dark, cool place to locate my onions, away from the potatoes. They are now closer to where I use them when I'm cooking, too! Not only that, but I read that they will last MUCH longer if you put them in brown paper lunch bags with holes punched in them.
What kind of hobbies or habits do you enjoy engaging in to help keep you sane when life seems a bit out of control?
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