Pretty Pantries vs. Functional ones?

Well I am officially working on week one's hot spot, THE PANTRY!  Monday evening I took the time I would normally spend watching T.V. to clean out and begin organizing the pantry. We moved into this house almost a year ago and my pantry has been an easy place to dump things and hide things when in a pinch.  But Monday came and here I was faced with something I have publicly announced I was going to partake in, "THE CHALLENGE." So I must proceed, were my thoughts. I can't fail!  I kept thinking that each week I will give up something that I enjoy to tackle these hot spots and turn this into my Lenten journey as well. ( I love to multitask!)

1. Take visual stock of space and items
2. Remove all OLD/UNUSED and NONE KITCHEN items
3. Plan the shelves: Organize by type of food
4. Ensure accessibility

So here goes.  I worked one shelf at a time. I utilized my island and the landing zone and cleaned out the pantry. Funny but my once packed pantry is now a organized, clean and usable pantry. Project accomplished so I thought. Wow and really in one evening! Who knew.  I wondered how I would spend my time the rest of the week. So I began researching.

Prior to joining  Project Simplify 2012, I have been a Pinterest junkie. I am always looking for ways to organize things.  I had not looked into what an organized pantry might look like and never searched for that topic either. But I typed into Pinterests search bar the words, "organized pantry" and found BEAUTIFUL pantries with glass jars, labels and pretty things.  So now I am spending the rest of the week planning my beautiful pantry. I don't know that I will accomplish that exact task but I will soon enough.

As promised I will take "after" pictures of the organized pantry. I will post those on Friday with yet another posting regarding this weeks hot spot, "the pantry."