Clean Out Your Pantry

The past couple of winters we have participated in the Three Rivers Pantry Challenge. I don’t think you’ll see much of it on people’s blogs but over on YouTube and Instagram you can learn more about it. One of the reasons that I love to participate is that it gives me a chance to clean out my pantries from products that I don’t really want in there. It’s a chance to use up a lot of the things that we have on hand so that they are out of the way and we can start fresh into the spring season. Almost like a pre-spring cleaning if you will. I honestly enjoy it a lot and have seen it help save money and stress. This year, I was on bed rest due to where we were at with our fertility journey. Sadly, that meant I didn’t get to do a lot of holiday cooking either which left my pantries very full. Once I was up and moving again I decided to do my own pantry clean out.

How I Found Items

There are three levels to our pantry. Our working pantry, our short term storage, and our long term storage. For this task, I decided to go through our working pantry and short term storage. As I mentioned, we had a lot of ingredients left over from things I had intended to make over the holidays but didn’t get around to and that is on top of me just not cooking like I normally would. It was a mess.

Our working pantry was absolutely overflowing. Things fell out every time I got in there. I decided to pull out anything that was opened or partially used and add it to the pile of things that would be included in the pantry clean out. The next thing I looked at was expiration dates. If there was anything expired or going to expire before my due date in August, I pulled that out too. These were things that needed to be taken care of before we had the baby so I wanted to get them out of the way as soon as possible.

The only thing I looked at for our short term storage was expiration dates. I used to keep these on a spreadsheet to try to track them and make sure we were moving through things. To be honest, it just didn’t work for me. We continued to fall off track. However, I was pleasantly surprised to only find one expired can and the rest were just upcoming items. Again, I pulled out anything that was going to expire before August to get it out of the way.

Side Note

As a little side note here, I had double intentions with this. It was also helpful to see what needed to be ordered and replenished before the baby too. My goal is to have a months worth of meals in the freezer/canned before the baby arrives. I don’t want to have to run to the grocery store for condiments or something I could easily have handy. I cleaned a bunch out and also ordered replacements and reorganized so that I knew we’d be in a good situation moving forward.

What Did I Make?

As I mentioned, my goal is to have a months worth of food and meals in the freezer for after the baby arrives. I tried to utilize the ingredients that I had to add to that stockpile, where I was able to. There were some things that just didn’t fit into that category and simply got used up. Unfortunately but also kind of wonderfully- the easiest way to use most of them up was to make sweets and desserts. With a lot of the ingredients being items leftover from the holidays, there were a lot of ingredients that fit this bill.

Recipes

Most of these recipes are not my own, though I did make a couple of the jam coffee cakes as those are a big favorite around here. 

Bread Machine Cinnamon Rolls– These really went straight to the freezer. I made the dough in the bread machine which saved a bunch of time and effort. It was my first time doing that and something I’ll definitely be exploring further. 
Coconut Cream Pancakes– This was a big win because I made a double batch! We ate them for both dinner and then I had a batch to put into the freezer too! Two birds, one stone!

Pineapple Chicken Salad– This was a great weeknight dinner. I had intended to freeze some of this too but I was nervous that we wouldn’t like it. It’d be a great option to use up some pineapple zucchini too!

Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies– I had peppermint marshmallows on hand and they added a fun twist to these cookies. 

I did make one batch of Colin’s mom’s Oatmeal Scotchies too. They are one of our favorite cookies and didn’t last long enough for me to get pictures to be able to share the recipe. I’ll for sure update this post when I make them again to share that wonderful recipe.

In Conclusion: Clean Out Your Pantry

The pantry clean out was a major success. It provided treats and meals for us in the moment. Plus, it also helped me get a head start on our freezer stash for that postpartum time that is coming. I like doing things like this because it challenges my cooking and really forces me to step out of our routine. I even created a pinterest board to give me some inspiration and ideas of what to make with these ingredients. You can check out mine or make your own! All in all, I highly recommend that you take the time to clean out your pantries once a year. Even if it’s not a pantry challenge, it’s worth clearing out the clutter to make sure you can have a fresh start each year.