Spent the weekend pleasantly if frenetically at times doing more decluttering of the household, specifically the kitchen and a rearrangement of the food.

One of the things we did was donate to Goodwill the canister set we received as a wedding gift. It was a lovely canister set, stoneware in white and blue, but it was, sadly, essentially useless. None of the containers was airtight. That means although I had flour in the flour canister, because we didn't bake every week (or even every month), any time we did bake I'd end up getting a new bag of flour because I didn't know how fresh the flour in the canister was. On Saturday we had the canister full of flour of indeterminate age and three half bags of flour behind it. I tossed it all except the newest bag of flour that James bought for the latest batch of sugar-free cookies.

We keep our sugar in a big square Rubbermaid container, and the Sugar canister instead contained wheat flour. I think we bought it when we got the breadmaker, three years ago. Out it went.

The Coffee canister was empty and the Tea canister had peppermint tea in it.

Cleaned the canisters and off they went to Goodwill to make someone else happy.

To replace canisters we bought airtight (well, I guess as "airtight" as you can make a gadget like that) clear containers called "ClicClacs" at Linens'n'Things with the coupons we had. The two larges ones now hold five pounds of flour and the big Bisquick box (six pounds) from Sam's. Smaller ones hold "pioneer porridge" from Nora Mills, steel-cut oats, soy flour, and the biscuits James made for breakfast yesterday morning. Also being used are three glass "goose canisters" that have rubber rings (like on canning jars) and are pretty much essentially airtight, too, and two small "apothecary" jars from JoAnn (love those 50 percent off coupons!) which are tightly sealed.

We also cleaned out the two big pantry cabinets. We had foods in there that were still good, but that James could no longer eat because of the diabetes: puddings, cake mixes, extra baking sugar, honey-sweetened cereal, etc. We packed it all up in two photocopy paper boxes and left it next to the food collection barrels at Publix. It would be a sin to just throw it out and waste it.

With the food gone, James' fruits and juices, which were taking up so much room on top of the microwave, are now in the cabinet, the flour and Bisquick container taking their place. Since all the containers are now clear, we'll know when they are growing low instead of guessing. And the airtight ones will keep their contents fresher.

Each of the cabinets also has its own whiteboard, on which I have an index of what is kept on each shelf. These have been redone.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 9:43:00 AM

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