Day 2: Declutter the Pantry!

I was sooooo excited about this challenge (and not so excited, depending on the moment's thoughts!) because my food storage room has been badly in need of fixing for months. No wait, I have to be honest and say YEARS! Ever since our move to California and back in 2008-2009, I have not had my food storage organized and it drives me NUTS!

Here's what I wish my food storage room looked like!
Hey - quit laughing! It's possible.
For at least a few days. . . right?

I think it all started because of my health issues that pretty much limited me for a very long time to hardly ever going downstairs. It sounds really crazy now that I'm in a high-energy time of my life, but for months, no years, going down the stairs was just too hard so I avoided it much of the time. And so you can imagine what happened to my downstairs - especially since it's mainly the kid-zone! Yeah.

Now I will give some credit here to my wonderful children. They are all jumbled like me, so that means that while they are perfectly capable of making messes and making them well, they are also extremely good at digging in and getting a job done well when the mood hits them. So the downstairs has gone through it's up's and downs over the years. Right now it's teetering somewhere in the middle. The public rooms are doing fairly well considering that I don't spend a lot of time cleaning and organizing down there, but the bedrooms - well, they are pretty much unmentionable!! 

SO - now to get back on the topic. . . Food Storage Room, Day Two, right. 

I was extremely excited because I knew how badly I needed to do this, but also groaning inside because I knew it would be a lot of work. In the end, it wasn't so bad. . . because I never got to it!!!!

GRRRRR! I went to bed last night with half of me wanting to stay up for 1-2 hours to make sure I did my challenge for the day, and the other half of me saying, "It's okay, you don't have to be perfect. You worked your tail off today, and there seriously was no time that was not completely packed with something." At the same time, what good is committing to 1-2 hours per day on a project if I don't actually truly commit and truly do it? Ahhh. . . a question for the ages!

I can't tell you how many times in the past I would have possibly given up completely because I missed one day. But NOT THIS TIME! A commitment is a commitment. And I have committed to 30 days of Power Purge. So what's the solution? Duh! I will add a day on the end!!! Haha. How simple is that? I will keep track of the days I miss and just add them to the end, and do them then! OR - when Hannah comes up with a challenge that doesn't really fit my household (like if there's a "clean out the toy room" challenge, since I don't have little kids with a room full of toys anymore), then I can fit this one in then. OR - if one of the challenges takes me no time at all because that area is already clean & organized (haha, yeah right), then I will fit it in then! Right? RIGHT!

And here's the sad part - how many times do we give up on something because we can't be perfect at it? And yet when you really sit back and take a moment to analyze the situation, the solution is often very simple. 

So - no worries all my jumbled friends - you really don't have to be perfect! Not only that, but you won't be perfect no matter how hard you try. And here's the profound point: The only thing you can be truly perfect at is being PERFECTLY YOU! 

To me, that means always getting up when you inevitably fall, and starting anew each day. Just hop up joyfully, dust yourself off, and keep going. Or, as Dorie would say, "Just keep swimming. . . just keep swimming!"  

See how cute & happy Dory is? Who cares if she's nuts! haha!

p.s. - For those who are disappointed because you learned absolutely nothing about delcuttering your pantry, check out Hannah Keeley's blog here: home-organization-zone-1-power-up-that-pantry



* * * UPDATE Friday January 18th * * *

Guess what? The next day, after I wrote this post, I got motivated and started working on clearing out an old closet near my kitchen to create a more-accessible upstairs food storage room! This will be for shorter-term things, or products that are pretty old that I need to use up.

Thanks to help from my son Joshua, my daughter Katilyn, and my nephew Evan, I can finally say that at least a portion of my food storage/pantry area is ORGANIZED. YAY!

And here's a picture to prove it ------------------------------->

YAY! It almost looks like that picture up above. . . just need to get the rest of the little cans from downstairs and move them up here. . .

Booyah!!

(Definition of "Booyah: from Urban Dictionary: an exclamatory statement, often said when someone is extremely overjoyed. Often people do a hand movement simultaneously as they say 'Booyah' while clenching fist and thrusting their elbow downward vertically.)