Getting Things In Order

Since I have a bit of time on my hands, I decided that I could tackle some of the more frivolous organizational tasks on my wish list.  First batter up: our pantry.  I mean, who usually has the time to just dive into taking apart their food stash in the busy days of our lives?  If I weren't on maternity leave, I know I wouldn't.  I would be using those precious free moments to drink a glass of wine and read a book.  Anywho, in keeping with the theme of things this month, I did find a Pinterest pin regarding organized/inventoried pantries.

This comes from my For the Home board:
http://www.pullingcurls.com/2014/03/pantry-excel-file.html

It mostly talks about having an excel file for the inventory of the pantry.  I thought this was a good start, figure out what has fallen into the darkest pits of this tiny closet and arrange it in some meaningful manner while recording what I have in an excel file.  I didn't use the template she had because I am pretty good at excel and customizing her sheet to match what we actually had was going to take more work for me than just making my own.  Here's a before picture of my mess:

I am sure this picture isn't going to do it justice, but there was only a somewhat convoluted convention to how this was organized.  It changed every time I stocked it from a grocery trip too.  A summary of what I found:
Oldest expiration date:  I think the oldest date I found was 2012, so not tooo bad.  And it was only one item, so really I think we were doing pretty good.
Most bizarre item: Seaweed snacks.  I guess they were supposed to be like kale chips, but just made out of seaweed.  Clearly we were not interested in trying them.  This is what happens when people give you really weird food to try and you have no intention of doing so.  You take it home, give it a nice cozy spot deep out of sight and when you do some big deep clean months later you realize that you took it to be polite and have no intention of ever consuming these things.
Most Unexpected Find: 6 boxes of chocolate pudding.  I think I just kept buying them 2 at a time thinking, I would love some pudding pie.  Well, I have enough to make 3 pies worth now.  I guess we are stocked for any pudding pie emergency we might have.

Let's just say I filled a trash can with stuff that was either old, stale (marshmallows that were like pebbles), or just something we were never going to use.  I tried to put things back in a manner to reflect the categories I used on my excel file.  Keeping pasta and grains together, bakery items, snack foods, and canned goods on their own shelves.  This is what it looks like after:

It may not look like much, but I now have a better idea of everything we have and more importantly, where to find it.  I also got to sweep out the bottom of the pantry and finally collect the last of the popcorn kernels that exploded all over the place last winter.  So we are cleaned and generally in order now.

The next step is figuring out the best method to update this big excel file.  I am a nerd, but not a very diligent nerd.  I could say I'll update it daily after preparing meals, but I know me.  That's not going to happen.  I also know I don't have time to do an inventory every month, so we will have to figure out something that will work.  In the grander scheme of things, it would be nice to determine a good way to incorporate what gets depleted into a grocery list.  I still have another 3 weeks of leave, so I am sure something will come to me by then.  In the meantime, I have photographic evidence that at one point in time, this was clean and organized.  Score one for me!