A Bit of Cupboard Love

Last Friday evening, I was home alone with the dog, as OH had gone out for a few drinks with some cycling friends and I decided to give the cupboard in the vestibule a bit of love.

This cupboard has four compartments, a pantry shelf, a DIY beauty shelf and a couple of sections housing miscellaneous things such as sports equipment, birthday/Xmas cards, xmas lights, vases, candlemaking equipment plus various other bits and pieces. It's the kind of place that things gravitate to, when you don't know where else to put them, so it often becomes a bit of a dumping ground and of late, it's been a bit cluttered.

I started with the pantry shelf, as OH had complained that the plastic lidded box I'd put dry goods such as rice/pasta etc. in, prevented him from getting to the cans of baked beans easily, as the lid jutted out.

Here's a before picture:

I bought a new box on eBay, which I originally bought as a possible receptacle for my fabric stash. Unfortunately, it wasn't as big as I'd hoped, a completely different colour to what I expected and was not right for the job, I'd bought it with the pantry in mind too, as I figured that if it did'nt work for the fabric, it would be fine for the pantry. Hence, why I just ordered one.

Anyway, I took everything off the shelf, checked the dates and anything out of date or close to BB date I left out so that we would use it up quickly. I did relocate a couple of things, throw a couple of things out and also put a couple of things we wouldn't use aside to donate to the food bank. When putting everything back, I put them in date order so the older things would be used first. It looked a lot better, created more space and everything could be seen and accessed a lot more easily. Here's a picture after the re-organisation:

The next shelf down, was the shelf I use to house all of the ingredients for making DIY beauty products. In all honesty, I haven't made much in recent years, just some roll on deodourant and some paw balm for the dog.  Here's a before picture:

Many of the ingredients were out of date or many years old. I decided to be ruthless and throw some of it out. I will replace what I will use, such as shea butter and vitamin E oil, but some of it I won't replace. I did move a couple of things into either the baking drawer or the cleaning cupboard as they were multipurpose items, such as cornflour and citric acid and would probably get more use in their new location. 

I also recycled some containers that I'd kept from beauty products I'd bought and used. I needed to be ruthless, as they are just taking up space, with little likelihood of being used. Again, it looked a lot better when I'd finished:

There's a few more things to go back in here when I've washed them, but it will still be an improvement. I may even decant some things into smaller containers too, to take up less space. I called it a night after this shelf, leaving two more shelves to clean and re-organise, which I did the next day. I didn't take before pictures, but here are the after pictures: 

There was very little change, save the spaces are now much cleaner. I then continued on to clean the vestibule area, the stairs leading to the hallway, the downstairs toilet and kitchen floor, which all really needed it. Baby steps to getting on top of the house, but a definite improvement.