Extreme Pantry Makeover

Do you know someone in your life that does everything for everyone else?

I do….my sweet and amazing mother.

She will come and visit me and my family and cook, clean and even sew my girls clothes.  I like to call her a machine.  She has children living all over and she helps them pack and move, babysit her grand kids and much much more.  The list goes on.

My mother and father are actually the cleanest people I know.  But there is a secret my mom keeps from everyone and today I am outing her.  Her pantry is a disaster.  I think it is the one thing that is hidden. She never finds time to clean it because no one goes in–until now.

So for her birthday my sister and I came up with the best idea of organizing her pantry and not telling her.

We had to do this very quietly because we didn’t want her to find out.

We first went to walmart and bought some organizational items.

I am sure you could even find a lot of these items on Amazon or at the dollar store.

We knew we didn’t have a lot of time so we got right to work.  We emptied out her whole pantry and looked at all expiration dates and food that wasn’t needed in her pantry we threw out.  Then we took all the poster boards and other items that weren’t food related and put them in another closet in her house.

We actually were surprised how many garbage bags we filled.  We were also a little nervous because we wanted to do something nice for our mom but we didn’t want her to get upset if we threw too much out.

If we had any doubts about throwing something away we put it aside to ask her later.

I loved these storage dispensers the most and I even bought some for my pantry.  They are great for oats, cereal, sugar and much more.

 Look how much better this looks in the dispensers and not in the bags.

Here are some before and afters.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

My favorite thing was all the organizational items that we bought at Walmart.  They made our job so much easier.  I also love that you can actually walk in the pantry without tripping over the rice cooker or poster boards.

Now for the moment I know you have all been waiting for.  We were so nervous that mom was going to be upset that we threw so much out.

Here she comes…..

And she loves it.  It was a total success.

We had nothing to be nervous about after all.  She was so appreciative and was so happy that we took the time to help her clean her pantry. Phew!

Mission accomplished.

Try to find time in your busy life to help someone you love.  We are all so busy running around with our heads chopped off that I think that we forget to help others. It was so fun doing something so nice to the women who has given me everything.

Have you done a secret makeover recently?

I would love to hear about it.

Don’t stop at a pantry make-over! Keep the organization ball rolling with these 21 tips to make your kitchen more efficient:

Check out this brilliant solution for organizing your canned goods. So smart!