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!

Getting Organized

The act of getting organized doesn't seem all that hard. Basically it takes a little grunt work up front, but then you have a system that only needs upkeep, not an overhaul. Right?

Lately, I have been trying to get my act together and get to this organizing business. I am here to say it's not as easy as they make it look on TV. No wonder people get paid to come in and dictate what to keep on how to keep it. We are all tied to frivolous things. Well, I know that I am. Good, bad, or indifferent, that's how it is.

The first part of any organization is the sorting of what to keep, what to toss, and what to donate. This should be simple, and yet sometimes I get hung up on the toss decision. Sometimes it's not good enough to donate, but I know where it came from and why it was important so I don't feel it deserves the trash can, so I end up keeping it.

As I go through my stuff now, every drawer I open, every shelf I scan, I ask myself, why do I have this? For example the collection of matchless socks. Was I hoping that one day, 5 apartments later, their mate would just appear? Of course not! But why then are they still in my drawer?

I think I grew up with the "waste not, want not" mantra being drilled into my head. Now in adult life, it makes it harder to get rid of things that bog you down. You tell yourself, "Someday that could be useful!" or "If I just bought this piece it would work!" But you know deep down that's never going to happen. The opportunity cost of keeping something is what you really need to weigh out.

My next challenge comes with boxes of random things that I at one point cleverly thought, this is organized, put the lid on the box and called it a day. Except, I can't tell you what's in that box, much less why I have it. I did pretty well with the filing cabinet, so onward to the depths of mysterious boxes!

Busy Sunday

I have been awake now for 12 hours today and I feel like it's been a very busy 12 hours. Maybe productive is a better word here, I am not sure.

I woke up to rain and hopped out of bed. It's possible that "hopped" is an exaggeration, but I did get up and moving in a relatively non-slow motion. I came downstairs and enjoyed a fresh donut and cup of coffee that Rob had gotten for me.

I got to the shower to find that I had hit the jackpot on having hot water. Some back story needed here: Apparently one of the two hot water boilers for the building is broken, aka, not making hot water. So for the past week and then some, it's been a crap shoot as to whether we have hot water or not. During the week I imagine I am the first one in our building up so I never worry about it then, but the weekends is another story. Yesterday I was not so lucky. I hope they fix that crap soon.

I hopped online and found that my team had made some sort of progress with our project for school and I went about doing other things. After spending the full day yesterday working on a section I wasn't assigned, I wasn't really in the mood to do more.

It started snowing down here just like it would have at home. That was pretty amazing. My cats were highly entertaining with their inability to catch snowflakes from the wrong side of the door. We may have had an inch or so stick, but it quickly melted. It's supposed to be really cold and wet tomorrow morning. I am glad I drive in when very few other people are out.

I finally managed to get all of my cookbooks into the binders I cleaned out last weekend. I went through old recipes and chucked out a lot of stuff. Some of it was duplication of things I already had written down twice or typed up and never got rid of the originals. I am just trying to get organized.

I went through my book collection to find books I was willing to part with. Surprisingly, there were a lot. I really don't want to ever re-read "The Devil Wears Prada" or "Goodnight Nobody" again, nor do I find the book "10,000 Dreams Interpureted" very useful. With my cleared out bookshelf space I was finally able to put these magazine holders I have had for over a year in a proper place.

I grabbed and enormous pile of magazines that have been collecting dust (literally) for over a year and started to go through those as I watched Beauty Shop. It was an ok movie, but I felt like I was multi-tasking so kudos for me. I got about half way through the stack. I also did the laundry and other household chores that I feel the need to do on Sunday to put the house right for the week.

At 5pm I went back to check on group work and found they were stuck again and sat down for an hour to plow through some stuff. This is frustrating to me because I had spelled out where to get all this information and how to do it. I feel like they aren't even trying.

I made dinner, well, technically, Rob made half the dinner. We needed sauce to go with raviolis. Delicious! I called my parents, made my coffee for tomorrow and now I am going to read my book and head to bed. It really has been a full day.

Spring Cleaning

For someone who moves as much as I do, I sure have a lot of junk. I have stuff too, but I have a lot of junk. Stuff I can classify as clothes, dishes, furniture, you know, the useful things we normally keep. Junk I can classify as boxes of unknown and barely used items that I cart from place to place because I think they are going to be important some day.

For example, I finally, FINALLY, got around to cleaning out my college notes box. Yes, it's been 5 years since I graduated and no, I have no idea why I still had them. I originally kept them because well, after 5 years of hard work, you want to believe you will use them again. Never once have I gone to look up formulas for calculus. I am now sitting next to a paper box full of old notes that are heading to the recycling center next week and I am feeling pretty good about it. It also freed up a bunch of binders that I need to use for organizing other things like my cookbooks that come pre-hole punched.

Along those same lines, I also cleaned out my filing cabinet. With most things being electronic (and my option for paperless bills) I find it silly to keep paper copies for most of this stuff. I have cleaned out about another 10 pounds of paper there that will go through my shredder. That thing is going to get a work out.

This is just the beginning. Rob and I really need to clean out this place before we can realistically move. Granted other people will hopefully come and box this stuff (and some junk) up, but it's not going to fit in a smaller place comfortably. We have figured where we are at right now is probably the largest place we could rent anywhere. We love the room, but we filled it right up with all of our belongings.

After merging our two households together, we now have to figure out which to keep of what. We have done a decent job so far in that we have things mostly settled now (aside from a pile of stuff we want to sell). I went through the hall closet and cleaned out blankets, towels, and sheets that we can get rid of. I figure start with the small places and just try and work them one at a time.

We will probably end up donating a fair amount of things such as old clothes, and things we aren't able to sell. However, I have a feeling that Craigslist is going to be seeing a lot of action in April once Rob finishes his classes. I know there's at least one kind of dopey filing cabinet that will be making it's way there. :)