Waste Not Want Not and a Baking Drawer De-clutter

Sunday morning I found myself melting chocolate and making crispy buns. 

As a consequence of buying a different brand of cereal for Little Bird, which she didn't like, there was almost a full box languishing in the cupboard not being used.  As I don't eat cereal very often, preferring muffins, crumpets or potato cakes for breakfast, and OH prefers Bran Flakes and Fruit and Fibre (healthy man), and as I don't like to waste food, I decided to use said cereal and make some chocolaty treats.  Not very imaginative I know, but they were super easy and I haven't made them in a while.  (I do sometimes make these at Easter using Shredded Wheat (more nest-like) and top them with chicks and eggs.)

Using half the cereal and half the chocolate I'd bought, I made lots of crunchy treats to see us through the week.

That's one way to get it eaten!  There's also plenty left to make some more next week, when hopefully I'll be left with more space in the cupboard, without having unnecessarily wasted any food. 

Whilst on the subject of baking, not really an area of expertise for me, I thought I'd share a great little idea with you for storing bun cases, that I saw on Pinterest.  They are kept very neat and tidy in a jam jar.  Here's a picture of mine.  It keeps them in one place, saves them spilling all over the baking drawer and you can clearly see what you've got, which saves buying more when you really don't need them.

 

All this talk of baking gave me the sudden urge to de-clutter the baking drawer, in the hope of inspiring me to bake more.  Here is what it looked like before I started.

 

 

 

Quite tidy underneath, but lots of things randomly thrown back in on the top.  It's a lovely deep drawer which is really useful, but I find I can never keep it tidy for long as there's far too much in it.  (Probably, because a lot of it never gets used)  There's duplicate bags of flour and boxes of icing sugar, some items I've never used and are not likely to, plus those few things that I need quite regularly, but still have to root around to find which is quite annoying.  If it gets too untidy, things fall out of the back of the drawer and stop me closing it.  It's a fine line.

 

I decided that I needed to be a bit ruthless.  I'd tidied it a while ago and got rid of quite a few things, but there was still more that could go.  As you can see from the next photograph I earn my name around here as Mrs Receptacle as I often like to put things inside of things inside of things.  If you know what I mean.  It does work though to keep things in order, but is probably a side of my personality that OH finds most scary.

 

 

Eventually with a bit of effort, the drawer was in a lot better order.  Still a bit cluttered, but I know that most of the things I use regularly are within easy reach and don't require my delving into the depths.  Maybe when I get around to using up some of the duplicates, or just using some of the things in here full stop, there will be a bit more room.  I live in hope.  Here's the finished result anyway.

 

 

Continuing with my kitchen de-cluttering, with the aim of making it a clutter free zone.