It’s official. I’m down 2.5 pounds for last week! Sweet! You have no idea how nervous I was stepping onto the scale this morning when I got up. I ate big yesterday, and I had dessert, and the scale still stayed down. I would love to see losses like this last week continue every week, but its not likely. If they did, I’d be at my goal weight in about 8 months, instead of about a year. But even if it takes another year, or even more, its okay because I will get there.
The storage containers- all with lids, and all neatly stacked.
The last few days, the most useful things I’ve done was try out new recipes. Its fun, and its going to help extend our menus outward, but its not really what I was thinking when I said I wanted to do something productive every day. Today though- today I set about re-organizing the kitchen. This has (on and off) taken up most of my day.
The cabinets where we store our food storage containers was so full tons of stuff would fall out when you opened the doors. Containers were haphazardly piled, stacked, and thrown in every which way. If the lid wasn’t on the container, good luck ever finding one that fit. I took everything out of the cabinet, and I made three piles. 1) Containers with lids attached. 2) containers that had had store-bought food in them, like yogurt or butter or sour cream. This became my trash pile. 3) containers and lids that were not attached. A few items moved from pile 3 to pile 1, but not many. The remainder of pile 3 went into the trash pile. I took those out to the trash, and went back to the others. Big containers went on the bottom shelf. We don’t use those so often. Smaller containers went on the top shelf. And somehow, after throwing all those away, we still have quite a bit of shelf space left, and minimal stacking. If I can’t find a container now, its because we don’t have it. I also found some containers that don’t belong to us- a tupperware bowl that is his dad’s, and a cookie tin that belongs to my mom.
Most stuff has been moved to an airtight container, excess packing thrown away, and stuff we will never use thrown out.
Then I started in on the “pantry” shelves. Our kitchen is tiny, and we don’t have a pantry, but we do have a shelving unit in the corner that keeps our dry goods- cereal, rice, pasta, oatmeal, beans. It also houses the sauces and mixes we use, as well as tea bags. I found two round storage containers in the back, covered in a deep layer of dust. One was empty. The other was huge, and half-filled with various tea bags. I threw out all the tea bags in it, as well as a box of tea with a use by date of sometime over a year ago. I cleaned the containers. I filled the smaller one with the leftover egg noodles I hadn’t used the other night. That filled it as full as it could get and still have the lid fit on. The bigger one I dumped a box of pasta into it. Most of the pasta we use is the same stuff, just different shapes, so figure we can store it in there and toss the boxes. Having to measure out a quantity will also help in portion control because I won’t just be dumping the whole box into the pot any more. The three new containers I bought now house spaghetti, beans, and oatmeal. I could use went back for two more of them, one for rice, and one for that 5 pound bag of raisins I bought. Yes, I really did buy a 5 pound bag of organic raisins a few weeks ago. Then I dumped out the muesli cereal I tried and hated 2 years ago and put my cocoa powder in that container. The sugar & cocoa powder are the only containers on the counter top still, but I’ll be putting the cocoa powder away soon. The sugar stays out because I use it often.
I straightened out and re-stacked the canned goods on the shelf by the stove. I threw out some natural peanut butter that had a use by date of sometimes in 2008. I threw away a completely solid honey bear- I know you can re-soften it, but the fact is no one has even considered doing it in the 2.5 years I’ve lived here, and we have usable, liquid honey already. I dug out some packets of instant oatmeal that I will probably give to my mom- she says her bf will eat anything, except lasagna, and I don’t like these ones.
I also pulled out all of the pots and pans and bakeware and re-organized those. Stuff we rarely use is in the back, similar items are nested together, and things we use everyday are in the front in easy reach.
Dinner tonight was Sesame Chicken, salad, and a rice side I’ve had sitting in the pantry for a while. I had planned for potatoes, but I’m kind of potatoed out right now after the last few days. We had taters what, three times in the last week? Anyway, the chicken breasts I used were tiny- bf looked at me and pretty much asked if we were both supposed to eat that. I took about 2 oz. of it for myself and gave him the other 5 oz. or so. The pasta and the salads turned out good. We got arugula in our last box, so the greens were mostly arugula, with what was left of the spinach from last week. After dinner I had a slice of the sharlotka I made yesterday, and then made hot cocoa for both of us. That put me about 6 points into flex.
Tomorrow I’m planning on doing some dusting.
