Happily Ever After

I decided a while back that my pantry walls had better match my kitchen walls. One can view the pantry interior from the kitchen, and it just didn't "flow"; what with the kitchen walls being butter yellow, and the pantry walls being 50 year old lead based white paint on 80 year old beaded board walls with colonial blue (bleck) shelves.

Today, I decided to stop beating around the bush and DO IT!

The room is puny - maybe 7 feet by 10 feet. It's walk-in closet size.

But never underestimate the ability of an organizer like me to cram as much stuff as possible into as small a space as possible, and have it look like not that much stuff is actually in there.

It's a Jedi Mind trick. And the Force is strong with me.

So I started hauling stuff out of the pantry and stashing it in the dining room.

Blender. Three crock pots. Meat grinder. Food dehydrator. Waffle iron. Pasta machine. Popcorn popper. The first load covered the table.

"Look at this.... this stuff!" I griped to Kevin who happened by. "So..... get rid of it," he says. "But I actually use this stuff! I can't get rid of it....."

Pressure canner. Pressure cooker. Fry Daddy. Doubble boiler. Food mills. 5 sizes of spring form pans. Boiling water bath canners. Three of them.

The "stuff" overflowed in the dining room. Released from the organized confines of the pantry, it just went crazy in there.

9,473,575,276 canning jars. 2,763 milk glass bud vases. "B" stamped napkins from our wedding. 5,273,2837 paper bags, plastic bags, and zip lock bags. (I never throw out a bag.) A can of black olives I don't even remember buying.

Finally, I got out half the stuff, removed the plastic shelves and started to slap paint on the walls. You don't roll beaded board..... you brush it. One boring stroke at a time.

I started about 1 pm. I got to a stopping place about a half hour ago, and I had one long wall, one short wall, and the window trim done.

And, the pantry is still home to about 6,387 jars of food I canned last year.

I think after I am done with painting everything in this old house that needs paint, I will have painted for approximately half of my lifetime. And then, it will be time to do it all over again.....