Bringing Order to Chaos (Part 1)

Though my kitchen table (and counters) tell a different story, I am a stickler for order.  If I have enough room to organize something, it gets and stays organized.  I am the type who labels closet shelves so everyone knows where their sheets go.  Yeah, that type.

In our little house, this is hard; there just isn't enough room for a lot of things, and closet space is not in abundance.  Luckily, we have a large, open basement that the previous owner sort of started to fix up.  Unfortunately, it has become a dumping ground for everything that doesn't fit in the main living area. 

Well, no more.  It's driven me crazy for quite a while, and I'm getting a handle on it.  I am starting with the biggest need of all--a pantry room.  Back in June, when I started to can, I realized that I really needed to have somewhere to put all the foodstuffs.  The pantry in the kitchen is small, and I can only keep what I need right away in it.  But I needed somewhere to keep the extra food, things like extra flour or sugar or the canned goods I made and needed to store away.  A set of shelves we had from Home Depot worked fine, but it wasn't going to be enough.  As the year went on, we put by more food and aquired more things--empty bottles to store herbs, canning jars, gallon jugs to catch sap for syruping, wax for candles, that sort of thing.  Ingredients for homesteading, you could call it.  And all those ingredients wound up in a mess on the basement floor, like this:

In that disaster, there's a dehydrator, food, house parts, some crutches left by the previous owner, light bulbs, and I think the tube things are part of a pool filter thingy.  Though the food was put up safely, the rest of the area is such a mish-mash.  I have just had enough.  Enter the plan.

Stunner, right?  It's pretty basic.  Two by four framing, no drywall on the inside, only the outside, and shelves, shelves, shelves.  Plenty of storage for food, appliances that are needed at certain times of the year (like the dehydrator), the canning equiptment, soap making supplies, glass bottles and canning jars, and on and on and on.  No crutches and no pool filter thingy.  A space that is a proper pantry.

I am very excited about it.  So much so, that I went out and started on it today.  Behold, the wall of 5 shelves!

Isn't that a thing of beauty?  Took me a darn long time.  And there is plenty more work to come.  Walls to build, shelves to hang, organizing to do.  It will be quite a little project, but I am looking forward to it.  Watch out basement mess, your days are numbered!