Organising the Larder

I had SOOOOO much fun this weekend reorganising our pullout larder cupboard. Apparently, according to a dear friend of mine (grumble grumble) it isn't REALLY a larder, but its where I put all our flour and sauces and tins, so I'm going to call it my larder. So take that Mrs Lisa Smarty Pants. Hehe. Hate you really! xxx


Anyway, so I hadn't actually planned on organising the larder (although it desperately needed doing) because we were planning on replacing the pull out cupboard mechanism with an actual cupboard, because, clever as the pull out thingy is, its not all that practical because you can't pull it out as far as I for one would like and so you can never quite see everything that's in there. 


So I was just generally tidying up and trying to make the kitchen a bit cleaner, tidier and prettier and so I took everything off our little glass corner shelves, cleaned them and put things back but I found some nice jars so I put things back in jars. I only took a before picture of one of the shelves but you can imagine it. It was all dusty, it had on it a load of stuff, including a salt grinder that didn't even work (I figured we'd never get round to fixing it and have since taken to crumbling sea salt into food when cooking anyway and if we need another one we can buy one) so I threw that away. I cleaned the shelves down and put back the things in their nice new shiny (not new, but looked new as I washed and polished them). This is the before:

Ok, it doesn't look terrible, but I think this looks much better:

I had bought this jar to put sweets and things in and it was living on the window sill but I think it looks much nicer here. The kitchen roll holder that has no kitchen roll on it (we've run out) has been moved back to the window sill (that needs tidying up too but I think that's a job for another day). 


Here is the other shelf, which I think looks great. The jar at the back has black peppercorns in it. The white stuff is salt. The bigger jar in the middle has turkish red chilli in it (we love that stuff) and the smaller jar has 100% chocolate in it. My husband uses it for cooking and wanted me to leave it out (it was in a yucky plastic container before). 

I actually found a few smaller kilner type jars (like the one at the back above) hiding among the herbs so I crushed enough black pepper to fill that one (our pepper grinder died too) but I forgot to take a picture of that. 


While I was busy tidying the kitchen and doing this my husband was out with both kids (bliss for me - to be able to potter about in the house on my own). Then he came back, gave me some large kilner jars (a pack of three for about £7 from TK Maxx) and then said he was going to go to Guildford as he'd been unable to find some crocs for my daughter cos her feet are too fat, bless her (she's only 18 months but has monster boats like her mum). I doubly loved my husband at that moment. MORE time to myself AND lovely new organisey-type jars? Heaven! Yes I know, I'm selfish. But you have to make the most of time to yourself as a mum when the opportunity arises plus, as he's away Monday to Friday next week I feel a lot less guilty for enjoying it than I might otherwise have done. 


Here are a couple of BEFORE photos. Apologies for the quality of the photos. It was very sunny and the light was in COMPLETELY the wrong part of the room for the photos. HOW inconsiderate!

Anyway, so I started pulling things out of the larder to see what was there. I got everything out and loaded the nice clean/clear work surfaces with STUFF! 


Then, I had to go out to drive to Binsted to see if I could find out who owned a particular plot of land (long story) and on the way back ACCIDENTALLY went to TKMaxx and splurged on some more kilner jars (two big big ones for cereal, a set of large ones and a set of smaller ones). I also got a lovely small clipboard and notepad:

And some very pretty boxes:

But anyway, I digress..... Here is how my "larder" looked AFTER I put as many things as I could into jars:

I love how the big cereal jars look. One for bran flakes and one for weetobix. But that will probably change depending on what we use most. I may even get some more. Would be handy to have some of those big ones for pasta shapes and maybe oats as well - for porridge. 


I also love how the pulses and nuts and things look in jars.


And its amazing how much more space we got. Another benefit is that its a lot cleaner because the flour bags are gone. Because of the design of the metal cupboards the paper bags would catch on the metal bits as you got them out which would mean the bags would end up with holes in which would mean spilled flour/sugar etc. No such problem with jars. 


I did have to leave a few things in their packaging unfortunately, but I may well be unpackaging them in the future!


Oops. Baby waking up so have to leave it at that for one night.