That's right folks I couldn't find my label maker...This made me take a few moments to reflect on how desperate the situation had become. I decided to tackle a few areas that had been bothering me in the kitchen. They aren't perfect, and they never will be, but it works and I felt better after doing these 3 things:
1. Going through the pantry and tossing things that were out of date and organizing it...again...Yes, this is organized...It's hard to tell I know. You should have seen it before...
2. Cleaning out under the sink, where there were 25 (give or take a few) bottles of old, 80% used up, cleaning supplies that were taking up space. I consolidated the 4 partially used glass cleaners into one bottle, I scrubbed the waste basket (you get the picture), and called it good.
3. Organizing the baking cupboards. Which included throwing away some very old corn starch (I don't use it very often and apparently you didn't either Mom because it was pretty old...), and again consolidating the two (actually 3, I found one in the pantry too...) sugar containers (one mine and one Mom's, the 3rd...I have no idea...). It is nice to open the cupboard and know where the vanilla extract is instead of having to search for it, or having a muffin mix fall on your head. I can now look in the cupboard and say "oh look, I need corn starch".. along with several other things, as you can see by the mostly empty containers...Again this was organized in the past...but hasn't been as of late.
After organizing these three spaces and emptying all the trash cans in the house I was left with this pile of trash:
Awesome! It actually isn't as much as it looks like it is because I threw away a lot of boxes from the pantry (they don't recycle card board here) and I didn't break them all down. I was feeling good about my progress...Until I thought about what we were going to have for dinner...And then I walked into the sun room to see that the table we were supposed to eat this mystery dinner on looked like this:
Note to self: Before "organizing", I should probably prioritize. The trash can smells lemony fresh-but there is nothing to eat for dinner and no uncluttered surface to eat it on if there was....Prioritize first, organize second. Mental note taken...I am a broken record. I seriously feel like I have learned this lesson before. I should look back to last January, I probably did the same thing last year...Some day it will finally sink in.
