Living Mighty: De-Cluttering

By Nicole Barnett

—

 

Words cannot describe the ecstasy…

 

Of an uncluttered pantry.

 

But if you’re anything like me, even the sight of those lower level pantry shelves is enough to insight more fear than the first time you saw the original Stephen King’s IT.

 

What’s in there?

How expired is it?

Surely by now it has formed some kind of dark society of unwanted pantry staples hell-bent on revenge – do I really want to open that can of worms (or spaghetti.  Each to their own.)?

 

So how does one overcome this terror and ensure a smile every time they open the pantry door?  Well unfortunately the first step is (unsurprisingly) to face your fear and reach your arm all the way into the unknown at the back of the lower shelves and pull everything out.  It’s okay, only 1 in every 1000 people lose their arm in the process.  You’ll be fine.  You’re not a statistic like those other people.  You didn’t even get chicken pox as a kid.

 

Right – pulling everything out.  Clear a space on the kitchen bench and pull every single thing out of the pantry.  Then give it the absolute clean of its life, because no doubt pulling everything out has revealed more that a few leaks, non-descript stains, and piles of flour/loose rice/macaroni elbows.

 

Then take a long, hard look at what is sitting on the bench.  Have you used that item in the last month?  What about the last six?  Or twelve?  When was the last time you used the cornstarch?  Did you realise you had three boxes of it?  You see where I’m going with this.

 

BE RUTHLESS.  If you can’t remember the last time you used the item, or you have multiple bags or boxes of the same thing, let it goooo.  Donate unopened packages to your local food bank, or to your child who’s away at uni and eating from what you can tell, a diet solely consisting of 2 minute noodles and beer.

 

Now that you’ve culled your stash down to the essentials, it’s time for the fun bit.  The key to enjoying your pantry (why yes, you CAN enjoy your pantry) is to just make it look nice – whatever nice means to you.  That can mean pouring all your dry goods into mason jars and labeling them with curly writing, separating out your goods by meal type into their own labeled plastic bin, or just going nuts and grouping everything by colour so that your pantry is a giant vertical rainbow.  Whatever floats your boat.  Here are some examples:

 

Nothing pleases me more than finding that someone has, in fact, colour coded their pantry.  Crazy? Maybe.  Smile-inducing?  Definitely.

 

This is also your chance to reorganise where your healthy snacks sit in relation to that packet of chocolate biscuits.  Pull all the delicious, healthful snacks such as your almonds, your tuna or salmon pockets and your special pack (or packs!) of The Mighty Food Kitchen granola right at the front, because who wants a yucky old biscuit when you can choose to live mighty and treat your bod with nourishing goodness.  In fact, just throw the biscuits out – our Honey & Ginger granola tastes just like the cookies grandma used to make, so you won’t even miss them.

 

So there you have it.  And as light-hearted as we are being with this – this is an opportunity keep you Mighty healthy, and truly will make you feel better every time you open the pantry door (which you do SO many times a day – all that happiness just waiting to be harnessed!!).  It’s also something you could apply to other clutter-prone areas in your life – be it your closet, your bathroom cabinet, or your spare room.

 

Do you have an immaculate, rustic, French-inspired pantry?  Or a rainbow pantry?  Or any other pantry genre (…) you’d like to share with us?  If so PLEASE do – we wouldn’t write something like this if we were not genuinely into it, and we’d love to see if any of you out there can teach us a thing or two!

 

Goodbye for now, and Stay Mighty!