September OPAM ~ What's in your pantry?

Today turned out to be a rainy day in our neck of the woods, which was great because it kept us in the house and allowed me to get some stuff done. Well, I got ONE major thing done, but the sense of accomplishment I'm feeling right now is pretty much through the roof. YAY me!

OK, so I know I'm kind of cheating here, but I will declare this my OPAM for the month of September. Yes, although you have not yet seen the results from my May OPAM, and I pretty much totally neglected it during the Summer months, I am now resurrecting it and presenting you with a new AND completed project. (If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about or what OPAM is, please go here)

So today I tackled our pantry, and what a project that was. YIKES! I started at around 8:30 this morning and I just got done taking a picture of my final product. Of course it wasn't without interruptions and breaks, with the kids, the phone, the Internet (yeah, that's where the "break" comes in, that damn Internet!), it was stop and go there for a while. But now it's officially done.

This is what the pantry looked like and has looked like for as long as I can remember:

And here's a closer look, just in case you haven't gotten the idea quite yet.

A heck of a mess, don't you think? It seriously takes FOREVER to find anything in there. So often times we don't even look and we just go out and buy another of whatever it is we need, which of course just made the problem worse. But really, how many Chili Powders does one family need? I found four,... FOUR!!!!

So the first thing I did was take everything out of the pantry and place what we are keeping, separated by category of course, on the table:
I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I found some stuff with expiration dates of 2003 and 2004 and 2005, some,... about two big trash bags full.

Then I came across these little gems:

and both of them had this on their side:

Yeah, that says "Sell by 3/01", in the event that maybe you missed it. Mortified doesn't even begin to describe it. What in the world are we doing with flour and wheat bran that we obviously DO NOT consume and expired over seven years ago? Guys, we weren't even married in 2001.

Oh, but it gets much better, my friends. You see I found one item that dates further back than these two. The gold medal for longest time sitting in our pantries (because we have moved two times and have apparently transported this baby along with us BOTH times because Lord knows you just can't buy it new in your new location) goes to:

WHAT?

Just in case you didn't catch that this is not one of those "Better if purchased by,..." Oh, no, this one says "Better if used by". I don't ever really use Flour, and especially not Whole Wheat flour, so I'm sitting here wondering when did Scott buy this, in 1999? Holy Cow! I don't even know what to say right now.

I feel like I'm about to start hyperventilating any second now so I must immediately move on to the happy stuff, cause as I'm looking around here there's no paper bag anywhere in sight.

OK, deep breaths. Inhale,... exhale,... inhale,... exhale. And again, inhale,... exhale. Much better.

Ladies and gentleman I now present to you the new and much improved pantry:

Oh yes my friends, that is actual available space you see here before you.

I replaced that tiny itty bitty spice rack (what in the world was I thinking?) with the Mack Daddy of racks ~ yeah baby! Our pantry just literally almost doubled in size, instantly!

Question, do you think I should ask Scott why he thinks we need to own three, count them, three racks double filled with spices? Hmm, maybe not. I can see how that could backfire. Oh well, at least now they are organized.