Good Afternoon to you,
I am sorry I was not with you last week, but I was struck, for the second time, with the awful virus which seems to be effecting many people. The first time, was just before Christmas, which was bad enough, but oh my word, the second time was dreadful, but I am pleased to say, that today, I am feeling much, much better.
So what have I been up to this past few days?
I have done something which generally I do every 6 months, although since we moved house, I have to say, I have let it slide a little. It is also something I have never blogged about. But I thought to myself, as the years go by, I notice my blog is becoming more of a life style blog, so I thought I would share something completely different today.
I say different, I am not re-inventing the wheel, because I know that both Ivy, my Grandmother and Phyllis, my Mother did this on a regular basis.
....they always cleaned and organised their kitchen cupboard shelves.
So today,
I will be giving you a glimpse into my kitchen cupboards.
With the cupboard doors closed, everything looks neat and tidy,
but I will just open the first cupboard to show you what is inside.... mmm not too bad,
although I notice that I have chickpeas and butter beans on two different shelves.
To be fair, I think tins and jars are always
easy to organise in our cupboards.
Onto the second cupboard,
oh my goodness... this tells a different story.
These shelves are certainly disorganised,
As you can see, everything in the last 2 cupboards have been put back rather haphazardly.
It's time to do something about it and
sort these cupboards.
I think for today though, I will show you how I organised the first cupboard, otherwise if I show you how I organised the 3 cupboards, you will be bored to tears and you will certainly be on kitchen cupboard overload.
The first thing I did, was to remove everything from the cupboard. I then put the tins and jars into order. I was amazed how many different types of beans I had stored in the cupboard.... none is ever wasted because I use tin beans quite a lot in my cooking.
I then checked the dates....
oops look what I found,
These 2 items had escaped my attention. To be honest I cannot remember buying Chestnut Puree, because it is something I have never used.... maybe I had a recipe in mind, but never got around to making it. The Mung Beans, I only use occasionally and this jar obviously escaped my attention. I did wonder if I could use them this week, but I'm sorry to say, the chestnut puree was dated 2017.... and the Mung Beans were dated 2018.... ouch.
I then washed the shelves with soapy water and dried them thoroughly.
Before I returned everything to the cupboard, I made a list of all the items.
Then I placed all tins and jars back into the cupboard, not alphabetically, although that probably would have been a good idea, but I put the butter beans together, black beans together and so on.
The final thing I did was to place the list of contents inside a cellophane wallet and blue tacked it onto the cupboard door.... again with hindsight, it probably
would have been a good idea to list everything
alphabetically.... but I can do this next time I
re-organise my shelves.
The idea of the list is, when I use something I can cross it off my list and instead of guessing and routing through the cupboard for something, I can see at a glance what I have stored.
The one difference between my cupboards and Ivy and Phyllis' cupboards, was that I did not line my shelves, as my shelves wipe clean very easily. But both Ivy and Phyllis would have used a pretty lining paper to line their shelves.
After I finished the 1st cupboard, I was feeling very pleased with myself, so I closed the cupboard door,
knowing that behind the cupboard door, everything was neat and tidy.
Now to tackle the rest of the cupboards.
Take care and I will see you next week.
As Always,
