Household Organisation

Dh re-organised the kitchen pantry yesterday. With my assistance, of course.

Now, my house is organised for the big things - you know, for LIFE. We manage to keep a fairly neat and fairly clean house, we do a lot of activities, we homeschool and have a full life, have a lot of people over and life generally works well. There is flow.

However, the little things tend to be kept in a more random manner. The bookshelves will be neat but with little order to the books. The cupboards will be useable and things can be found but there is little system to the storage.

This extends to to the kitchen. The kitchen is a little thing in the scheme of things, right?

Well, a disorganised pantry drives dh nuts.

And, on Saturday, when I visited a friend in her new house, I saw her new really large pantry, much larger than mine. That didn't make me envious. I could care less.

But I did feel pangs of guilt over her neat pantry. Everything put in sections, one could find anything at a glance.Lots of food.

Nothing higgeldy-piggeldy.

I like higgeldy-piggeldy. I like eclectic. I like a scrapbook approach to life ~ - in the small things ~ and a loose organisational stucture for the big things.

But I still felt bad about that pantry.

So, I started the pantry tidy up on Sunday morning. And dh took over, he is much better at this sort of detail than I.

Didn't he do a magnificent job?

Dh said " I love all your good intentions", when he found the pressed flower kit, the gingerbread men kit, the gingerbread train kit, the Chistmas cake baking mix. I buy these kits to do with the kids but we don't alway get around to it...Dh laughed at all the homeschooling and parish stuff I keep in the pantry ~ not much room for food.

And, he said "How can you run such a great Kumon centre, a great business, do so many things and be organised, and yet keep a basic thing like a pantry so disorganised?"

I don't know. Are these things related?

And the even bigger question is ~ Now, how do we keep our pantry this way???