The Good, Bad, and Ugly in the Pantries

 This is the bad. This is just a bit of the expired/wasted food I found in the back pantry. Three full grocery bags of waste :(. 

The good?  Evaluate and learn from the mistakes.

 Why all the crackers wasted? I know of two reasons, reason number one is the grands like peanut butter and crackers as a snack, now that I don't have all of them all of the time we just don't use as many crackers. Reason number two is the whole family would rather have crusty Artisan bread with soups.
Note to self buy ONE box of crackers on the next grocery run.

What's the deal with all those wasted cans of tomatoes and fruit? Now that I can enough tomatoes/fruit to get from one season to the next the store bought cans just sat around. The exception being the canned fruit that I can't do at home along with tomato sauce I also can't can
Note to self only buy tomato sauce as well as the canned fruit we will really use!!

 Thankfully I got to all this chicken broth just in time to use it up in the next two month's. We use a LOT of chicken broth but as with the tomato's and fruit I put up home made chicken broth/stock. Having a few cans of the stuff is fine especially during the holiday season.
Another note to self, back away from the broth isle!!

 Here is the stack of tomato's I need to use up over the next six month's or so. They very well may be moved to the DD's homes or given to the food bank/soup kitchen. Why give it away you ask?

 This is the why. I still have 2 cases of quart jar tomato's from last season as well as 1/2 case of pint jars. Salsa is down to only one case. Apple sauce and apple butter...our pantry runnith over!!! I don't think I will be canning apples this year :)

 Another area of clean up was these boxes of Keurig coffee things. I drink only decaf coffee or tea, with a few hot chocolate mixes thrown in (which BTW we don't care for) Hubby on the other hand drinks the good stuff. I had boxes floating around in both the front and back pantries.

 When I can get a killer deal on these things I do it. Looks like I have done it a bit too much in the ME department :) Hubby's real stuff on the other hand is not too bad. He takes a box to work ever week or two to use at the office. We don't drink coffee at home very often as we tend to go out for breakfast most mornings.

 Hubby does not like girly coffee!!! I have no idea how this girly coffee ended up in the pantry other than maybe they were gifted to us. I will be sending in the girly coffee to hubby's office so it won't go to waste here at home.
Note to self, keep an eye out for sales of the good stuff for hubby to take to the office

 Tea, tea, and more tea. Why this much? Well.....partly from really good sales but I think mostly leftovers from motel stays. When we travel I leave nothing behind!!! Hubby knows he better not come home after months on the road without a nice large bag of soaps, shampoos, lotions, and potions to donate to charity.

To clarify the "leave nothing behind" in motels I am not talking about fixtures or linens!!!! Lord NO!!! Just the leftover coffee packages and tea bags. I pulled together all the baggies and sorted away. I needed to sit down for a bit anyway. I hung on to the decaf tea bags, a nice baggy full of the caffeine tea is going to one of my buddy's homes who loves Earl Grey as much as I do. The rest is going to the food pantry. I'm not sure they will take them since they are just individually packed, not in a box but I would hate to throw out something that could be of use to those folks.
Note to self, if the food pantry/soup kitchen will take these I will continue to collect them. If not walk away from the extras as I have way more than enough no matter how high the lodging prices are :)

Pull out, sort, pull out some more then sort some more. Ingoing, outgoing, where does it all go? I did finally get this mess squared away today before hubby arrived home so I could prepare dinner but tomorrow might be just as big of a mess as I still have a few more spots to hit.

I also did a quick inventory of the large freezer. It's looking a bit bare. This past year hubby has be gone more than he has been at home. I haven't been restocking since most of the time I am cooking for one. Sunday dinners consist mostly of cook outs since its too hot to mess in the kitchen in the late afternoons during the summer.

I have a ongoing grocery list started so I can begin to reload the freezer/pantries as things go on sale. We are close to being out of butter but other than that I don't need to pay full price for anything!!!