Getting organised: the pantry

12 Mar

I cook a lot, as does my fiance. But when we moved in, rather than thinking about what goes with what in the store cupboard and how we should arrange things, we just shoved everything into the cupboard and hoped for the best. It has not been great.

The quickest way to save money when you are shopping is to know what you already have before you go out. We clearly have not been doing this. Below, please find a slightly embarassing photograph of most of the contents of our food cupboards..

Yes, we do have about 50 kg of Basmati rice, EIGHTEEN eggs, three packets of pine nuts (only two are photographed, but we found another one later), and enough crackers to feed a platoon. Yes, we have EIGHT cans of tomatoes and five cans or jars of anchovies. There are also six packets of salt in varying containers. This photograph also does not contain all the varying types of flour and the enormous bag of sugar I accidentally bought online thinking I was getting a small bag.

The Mayans might have believed the world would end this year, but I didn’t think I did until we laid everything out like this.

After taking stock of what we had and putting everything bag in much more logical places (tins of tomatoes with tins of tomatoes, for example, revolutionary), I am going to try much harder to check that cupboard before I go shopping. Fewer duplicates should result in a much cleaner, more organised cupboard and hopefully a neater, prettier kitchen too.