Leftovers

Yesterday, Apartment Therapy blogged Sunset magazine's story "7 organizing tips that really work," and although a lot of the advice, while wonderful and sound, is stuff you can more or less figure out with common sense, I did stop short at the instructions for organizing/cleaning out the pantry. Wait, what? I'll admit, fridge-clean-out day happens with some frequency at my house, as I have a nasty habit of not managing to eat all my perishables before they, um, perish, but it's possible that I have never in my life (save when moving apartments, which actually used to happen pretty often, too) cleaned out my "pantry"—or whatever served as a pantry at the time. Am I alone here? Does anyone else have years-old packages of Minute Rice (or the last forgotten packets of ramen from your undergrad days) tucked in the back corners of the cabinet? If so, set aside 15 minutes of your day and let's do this together.

1. First, pull all the food out onto the counter where you can see it. (This also means you get to see all the little left-behind stuff at the back of the pantry shelves and clean it out.)

2. Then, take Sunset's advice and sort the food into 3 piles: Read More »