10 Minute Challenge: A Clean Pantry

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I brought back the 10 Minute Challenge for the New Year after a long hiatus.  Just like I used to, I started giving myself 10 minute challenges. I set my timer for 10 minutes and tackle a household chore while my children are having a snack or lunch. It’s amazing how much you can accomplish in only 10 minutes when you focus on the task. The 10 minute challenge is a weekly feature on Mommies with Cents. Each week, I will show you one of the things I was able to accomplish in 10 minutes. I encourage you to join me- it really easy amazing what you are able to achieve, even if it’s incremental, if you set your mind (and timer!) to it!

My pantry was gotten a little out of control.  It not only had messy, unorganized shelves but outdated items and a mess of other things that just didn’t belong in there.  It seemed like such a big daunting project that I had been avoiding it — for far too long.  Sometimes the only thing holding you back is a lack of motivation.  If you can just get the ball rolling you’ll find it wasn’t as bad as you head dreaded and you’ll feel so much better after the task is accomplished!  Commit yourself to 10 minutes.  Set your timer.  If the timer goes off and you’re not finished you’ll most likely discover that you WANT to keep going!

Here’s how things went down for me this week.  The first day at lunchtime I decided to start with the smallest wall of my pantry:

I’m giving it to you straight.  I didn’t move anything before taking the picture.  Yes, there’s a plastic beach bucket in there and some art supplies, some random paper plates with dum-dum lollypops sitting on top them and some reusable shopping bags hanging from the wall obscuring part of the view of the shelves.  The box on the floor is one that I never completely unpacked from OVER A YEAR AGO.

After 10 minutes only briefly interrupted by my kids a few times, this is what I had accomplished:

Now I’ll admit that I just moved the box over to the next section of the pantry, didn’t take care of the wire rack that isn’t assembled properly and the reusable bags are still a mess.  Plus, the art supplies are still where they were before.  But hey.  This is a work in progress, yo!  At this point I really wanted to keep going because I had only just gotten started but I had to clean up from lunch and get the girls down for their naps.  Then I had some other work to attend to.

It wasn’t until the next day that I got around to shelf #2.  Here’s the before:

Wait a minute!  How did the bucket get back in there?!  Those darn kids! My bananas are over-ripe (banana bread time!) and these shelves are over-run with Christmas candy and junk that just needs to be tossed.  10 more minutes on the clock and here are the results:

Ok, once again I’m guilty of moving a few things over to the next section to deal with later.  And I just couldn’t let go of the Christmas candy yet.  Ugh.  Look how much stuff I got rid of though!  There’s so much more room on my shelves now!  Once again, I wanted to keep going but had other things to attend to and I still haven’t gone back to finish the last shelf.  It’s on the list for this week. It’s the worst shelf so I’m going to be sure to pencil in at least 20 minutes this time in case I need to go into “overtime”.

As you can see, I’m pretty simple. I don’t use fancy pantry organizers and it doesn’t look “pretty” but it still feels good to have it tidied up.  How’s your pantry looking? Could it use a 10 minute tidy?

I’d love to hear ways you manage your time at home with kids. Please share your tips with me and our other readers by leaving a comment, then come back next week for another 10 minute challenge!