Hi…did you have a good weekend?   Mine went by way too fast.  I was at work Monday thru Thursday and I remembered how much I like everyone I work with and how much I dislike driving to Kingsport and how much I love being home a bit more during the week.   Just a few more days and I’m officially through with this part of my work life.  

Soon I may start another part-time work adventure which, if it all works out, I’m very excited about. I can’t wait to share it with you. However, I’m no longer on my leave of absence and am currently working at my old job for a few more days.   Now..about this weekend.

Do you remember this?  It was at the end of one of my posts and was on my “to do” list?

The pantry is in the den.  The room is cool and  a great place for canned goods…and cleaning supplies…and just junk. Do you see any place for 72 pints of my prized pasta sauce and about 8 quarts of tomatoes? Right. I don’t either.

I’d thought I’d wait for Mike to do a few things toward completing this project, but he has been mowing like crazy because of all of the rain in southwest Virginia. It’s mow and then mow and then weed eat.

Here’s my reveal…I haven’t got it finished 100% but it’s close.   Mike has to put the light changing thingies and the Shark floor cleaning thingy, etc. in place and I’ve got additional labeling to do top the plastic bins, but in the interim…here’s what I’ve done…

This was so simple.   I took box tops from Sam’s Club and sprayed chalk paint on the boxes. I then used chalk markers to label the boxes of canned goods.   Easy Brilliant and cheap inexpensive.    And sooo….effective.  

If you home can, you know there is a problem with finding green beans in your basement, closet, pantry etc.  that date way back to the Mayflower and wondering what on earth you should do with them. Our nature in southwest Virginia is to NOT TO LET ANYTHING GO TO WASTE!!! I wrote the names of what was in the box tops and then noted in small letters the year they were preserved. While working on the pantry, contrary to the philosophy of not wasting anything, I discarded some peach preserves that I made five or six years ago, some pickled beets no one was eating, and some green beans and tomatoes that had a lot of rust on their lids. Seriously, I needed the space, and canning jars are too expensive to let set on the shelves and not be eaten.

Also, take a look at that glass cleaner box on the first shelf. Perhaps if I’d done this sooner, I would have realized that I did not need 12 containers of products for cleaning glass.

 
Meanwhile, I received compensation for this. I FOUND two jars of our PRIZED wild raspberry jam from 2011. They are the two little jars in between the BBQ sauce (it’s from Trader Joe’s and Mike loves it so I buy it whenever I’m near a Trader Joe’s store) and the green bean box (which I didn’t change the writing because it was almost sort of appropriate). I didn’t make any raspberry jam this year as it was 100 degrees when they were ripe and the turkeys were aggressively planning on what they were going to do with the raspberries…and they didn’t care to walk on the hill behind the house in 100 degree temperatures. The turkeys won.

I feel a sense of security in looking at this pantry. Home canning is part of our rural life. It’s not a dying art but a growing art in southwest Virginia.    I hope you find this idea on how to organize home canned goods helpful.