A Perfect Pantry? Fact Or Fiction?

Is there really any such thing as 'the perfect pantry'? There are blogs dedicated to the idea, magazine articles instructing you how to achieve one and pictures like this and this all over the Internet as proof that they do exist...somewhere...in some one's home...but probably not someone who actually cooks...and definitely not my pantry.

After reading one such eMagazine article, I decided to take 30 minutes on Wednesday night to tackle mine. I printed out the article and promptly left it sitting on my desk...at work...45 minutes away from my house. But never fear, I was able to pull up the same information on my iPhone. So, upon arriving home on Wednesday evening, I started a load of laundry and determined that I would work at cleaning and organizing my pantry until the timer indicated that the load was complete.

This is what I started with:

Basically, I could find the Velveeta macaroni and cheese dinners and the Ziploc bags...but only because I had just been to Sam's to pick them up and they were on top of everything else!

And I hate to show you this, but this is what the floor of my "L-shaped" pantry looked like:

I have several electric appliances built to feed an army and they take up about as much space as an army staging grounds to store. Somehow, over time, they had floated out from under the bottom shelf of the pantry all into the corner.

SO, with the timer ticking, I started emptying shelves with a vengeance. I was checking expiration dates, throwing the old stuff out and stacking the new stuff on the kitchen island for sorting. I had made it through two rows of the SIDE shelf when the laundry time went off!

I had not made it one fourth of the way through my pantry and my kitchen was a disaster. There was no way that I could leave all of that stuff out until I had thirty more minutes to dedicate to the task!

Needless to say, I was still at it when the timer went off letting me know that the dryer was finished as well.

BUT three hours, two trash bags (of old food and empty boxes) and much conundrum on how to organize properly later...THIS IS WHAT MY PANTRY LOOKED LIKE!

It was a thing of beauty for my tired old bones to behold! So, I took a long hot shower and called it a night!