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Is your friend's Pinterest board a homage to properly labelled glass jars and vessels?
Are you being inundated with pantry perfectionism?
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
In the virtual, organised pantry world, there is row upon row of preserves and pickles piled high, shelf after shelf.
Just like making proper sourdough bread, preserving is all the rage in the coronavirus pandemic!
There's more matching Tupperware than I've seen since the late 1970s, possibly early 1980s.
In the virtual, organised pantry world, there's not an oversized box of cereal in sight; let alone a dishevelled box of Weet-Bix, clumsily torn open one morning by some half-asleep, non-morning person in a hurry.
Pantry perfectionism is everywhere.
Don't get me wrong. I love nothing more than a good pantry clean-out.
It generally happens once a year, usually coinciding with a spring clean on my staycation.
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It's good to know exactly what you've got in stock, aside from pantry moths. From time to time my kitchen has become a heaving Airbnb for things with wings. (Interestingly, the great pantry moth plague of 2019 came to an end just in time for the global pandemic of 2020!)
It's good to know exactly what you've got in stock, aside from pantry moths. From time to time my kitchen has become a heaving Airbnb for things with wings. (Interestingly, the great pantry moth plague of 2019 came to an end just in time for the global pandemic of 2020!)
However, the level of pantry organisation during the COVID-19 crisis has been consistently high.
According to TupperBlog (it's a real thing): "In a quarantined world, there's nothing better (well maybe) than walking into a pantry that looks well organised and totally in order. But if you've found yourself with extra time to 'konmari' your kitchen, you'll agree that being organised is about more than just finding things quickly - it's about a sense of wellbeing, control and productivity that enables more joy when life can feel quite overwhelming at this time."
While my pantry presentation will never be Instagram-worthy, here's my top tips for keeping your staples in order this spring:
- Plastic's not that fantastic: I have inherited and bought plenty of glass jars over the years. None of them match. I have tall square canisters for pasta, rice, cereal and pulses. I have Donna Hay glass storage jars for baking supplies, picked up in a 40 per cent discount sale. Stanley brand JimJam Foods and Yackandandah Jam and Preserving Company jars are ideal to reuse for smaller amounts of baking supplies, herbs and spices. JimJam Plain Jane Pasta Sauce comes in an especially handy size container. Glass juice and cordial bottles are repurposed for all types of vinegar; just remember to relabel them well! Glass, unlike some other materials, lets you easily see what you've got in stock.
- Recycle station: I have three milk crates on the floor in the pantry to sort soft plastic, hard plastic and glass bottles. The soft plastic goes to REDcycle via the collection bins at Coles and Woolworths supermarkets. The hard plastic goes in the recycling bin and the glass bottles go to the Return and Earn, which has been quite the earner in a pandemic!
- Cheap fills: Bulk food stores let you fill up your dwindling pantry supplies without all of the packaging. Some supermarkets offer supplies such as Milo in sachets to refill tins.
- Hundreds and Thousands: Keep all cake decorating items together in a container. If they're not used daily, they're better off away in a hard to reach corner. Otherwise your kids will use them up on their ice cream in about a week. The same goes for storing party supplies. We only party hard a couple of times a year so barely need them in pole position.
- Buy pantry moth traps. Good knives, salt and pepper grinders and cast iron stock pots and pans aside, these are my best kitchen investment ever!
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