Last week, I shared a five minute focus on my pantry.
But, as often happens, five minutes leads to another five minutes.
I do not count on this phenomenon, but I take it when it happens.
After the first five, I kept going. I kept tossing and kept consolidating. I kept moving things to the shelves where I’d look for them first.
Here is what it looked like at the beginning of the five minutes:
After four minutes, it looked like this:
I’d pitched all of this (in the two five minute tackles):
Why four minutes? Well, at four minutes I was “done” with the two additional shelves I’d planned to tackle. I decided (right or wrong) that to start on another space would take me past the five minutes I’d set aside to keep working on this space.
Whatever. My pantry looks so much better (though, to be clear, so very far from perfect) and I can find things so much more easily!
This is so funny! I just went to my pantry to see if I had brown rice. When I was away in December my husband ‘helped’ around the house and re-organized the pantry and cupboards. Bless him, his intent was true, but in practice…. well he missed the mark. So I had to move this and that… and 15 minutes later (5 minutes per shelf) I know exactly where everything is again. I tossed a bunch too. Then I sat down for coffee and found today’s email, and laughed as we are totally on the same page today… thanks for being so open, I feel so much better knowing I am not alone in lacking domestic skills.
I like the “stepped” shelf on the bottom. I think I have pantry envy as well. Maybe it’s just because yours looks so much less crowded than mine. Not smaller, just less crowded.
I’m so proud of you right now!
I love your book! And just like Stella, I had to take the eyes over the book pic too!!
And I totaally got excited when I read her quote in the book!!
So neat to have your blog in an actual paper and ink book!!
sorry that this isn’t the ‘right’ blog entry for some fan mail …. I’m reading your book, and got as far as the timer and TPAD. I know timers are important I learnt that from FlyLady. But I LOVE the idea of timing tasks we put off. I didn’t believe emptying the dishwasher only takes 4 minutes. Just now I emptied mine – THREE MINUTES AND FIFTY TWO SECONDS! I’m hooked… and I’m a big believer in your bursts of five minutes. Any longer is just way too long with the inevitable interruptions from 3 under 5 and 4 more at school, never mind the DH….
And this is why I love you, Dana. You are real. Your pantry has real food, in real containers. Yes, this post is old, but it is new to me, and very relevant! My pantry suffers from my Costco addiction, but that’s another issue.