December 15, 2009

Pantry Pantry Pantry

Until we moved to Charlottesville, I'd never actually had a kitchen with a pantry. Obviously I'd had kitchens with shelves and storage, although some of those have been very much on the small side. But I'd never had a dedicated pantry space until we moved into the house across the street. There we had a large, double-door, slide out pantry and it was heaven. But pantry's are one of those things, like dishwashers and garbage disposals and a washer and dryer of your own that, once had, are hard to live without again. Not impossible, mind you, but once you've tasted the freedom of scraping your dinner dishes right into the sink and flipping a switch (a garbage disposal is on the list BTW) it's just no fun to go back to scraping into the garbage.

So you could say I was a leetile excited when we finished up the pantry Sunday night. Finished, is of course, relative in our house. There is still trim to add and we had shelves but no brackets, but for all intents and purposes, we had a pantry. Yesterday flew by in a whirl of I don't even know what and I never had a chance to go hunt up some brackets but today I was at Lowes bright and early(ish) so I could get to work on moving out of the tiny, cramped space we have been using and into my brand spanking new and much bigger space. Ahhh....space.

Once the island cupboards were cleared out I was able to shift some of the other kitchen things around so that we no longer have to pull out tumbling piles of plastic IKEA cups to get to the slow cooker or the yogurt maker. And while I realize it wont last, I'm far to lazy with things that cant be seen to keep everything tidy all the time, I love having everything straight and orderly.

I also scrabbled up some magnetic spice jars for the inside of the door to the "baking locker". Because it was an experiment I only made four but now that they are done I'm planning on heading back to the grocery store for more of the cute, squat little jars I found before they run out for the season. Whoo-hoo organization!