Pantry Project

I love to start projects. And though I’m not that great at finishing them, starting them is always a blast. My latest project involves one my favorite things: food.

Usually, we make a weekly menu for all our meals and go to the supermarket once a week. We then buy all the produce, pastas, and breads that we’ll will need for the coming week. Sometimes this works out well, but most of the time, we stray from the menu, either by eating at a restaurant or by deciding late in the week that we really don’t feel like what we planned for after all. This results in another trip to the store, an expensive trip to a restaurant, and/or wilted produce and unused items.

Now, we don’t have a big kitchen. In fact, it’s tiny. Matter of fact, one trip to Costco and we’re busting out of the cupboard seams for storage.

So Christa had a brilliant idea last weekend to use an empty area under the stairs/back door landing in the basement as a place for a pantry & additional storage.

Currently the area is filled with random boxes, leftover crap, stuff not touched since we moved in, and 4 inches of dirt, dust, and leaves/pine needles from all the shoes walking downstairs from the back door.

So I plan on tackling this project in a few steps:

1. Clean, sort, and toss anything sitting untouched since the move that is still under the stairs
2. Close in the steps leading into the basement to prevent the dirt/grime buildup in the pantry area
3. Curtain or close off one side of the stairs to hide all the junk from my office area
4. Decide on purchased pantry storage unit that will fit the area or build shelving

Step 1 should begin within the next few weeks. I’ll try to stay updated with pictures as I go along.

Before | 12/19/06