Household Hacks by Ace McCloud

Author:Ace McCloud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: household hacks, household hacks kindle free books tips guide, cleaning and organizing books home your house clutter hacks up, home improvement free kindle books solutions business magazines, diy projects household hacks books hobbies products decorating cleaning, diy home improvement hacks beginners building repair design organizing, household management tips hints projects secret repairs book
Publisher: Pro Mastery Publishing
Published: 2017-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6: The Well-Ordered Pantry

If you are lucky enough to have a good pantry area, make the most of it. Many new houses only have cupboards and perhaps a tiny closet for a pantry. A century ago, houses were built with large pantries containing ample, shelves and bins. I lived next door to an old house and always envied my neighbor's pantry. It was the size of my adolescent bedroom. The only pantry space in my house was a tiny closet under the stairs

Even with a small kitchen, you can usually allocate a cupboard to storing food and call it a pantry. You can also invent space by erecting some modular or stand-alone shelving on one side of a room. If you want the contents to be less prominent you can always suspend a curtain, bed sheet, or tablecloth across the front.

When I lived in a postage-stamp-sized city apartment with a miniscule refrigerator, I used to stop by the market every night on the way home, so I didn't really need a pantry. However, anybody with a substantial family will need a place to store canned food, dry goods, and staples. The larger your household, the more essential is a pantry

What follows are a few ways to organize and maximize your pantry space, no matter how expansive, or dinky, it may be.

Hack #100 – Inventory Your Pantry

Inventorying your pantry is essential. Whether large or small, you want to be able to identify your pantry’s contents and keep track of what needs to be used first. Everything expires. An organized pantry will help you use the oldest food first, so you don't waste anything.

One way I have found to keep track of pantry goods is to keep an inventory list. While you can maintain this on your computer, it is actually less time-intensive to keep a physical list in the pantry that you can update every time you grab a can. A paper list is okay and a chalk board or whiteboard installed on the inside door can be highly efficient. If you use a tally mark for each can, jar, or box, whenever you grab one all you need to do is mark through or erase a tally mark and you have an instantly updated inventory.

For example, I keep a supply of canned kidney beans in my pantry, along with cans of, vegetables, broth, and soups. Each of these items goes on my inventory list. When I use an item, I cross it off the list.

Let’s say I have 5 cans of kidney beans, 4 cans of tomatoes, 2 cans of chicken vegetable soup. Next to each item I place hash marks representing the number of items in storage, e.g., 5 tally marks beside “kidney beans”, 4 marks beside “tomatoes,” etc. When I grab a can of kidney beans, I put an “X” through the hash mark on the list, or I erase a hash mark from the chalkboard or whiteboard. Either way, I know exactly how much I have.

When I get down to one or two cans, I know it’s time to buy more.

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