Simple Blackbird Co

pantry refresh

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 19:40:00 GMT

Alright folks. Time for a pantry refresh! So far we have simplified the contents of our pantry. We have organized the contents of our pantry. We have even updated our spice rack . And here, I add a bit of “design” to my pantry.

My pantry was in a sad state people, it needed a major pantry refresh. When we first moved into our home 5 or so years ago I painted my house. Like, A LOT of my house. There’s not much easier a thing to change the mood of your whole house. Especially when the color of your house started off as a mustard yellow all over. Don’t get me wrong, I love to wear mustard yellow, a lot. But having it all over the main part of my house, accented with all those reds, it was too much. It was too dark. And most of all, it wasn’t me . Pretty much every room got a new paint job..

Except closets. I’m not sure why. Laziness? Maybe we ran out of paint and didn’t want to buy more? Whatever it was, my poor little pantry stayed white. For 5 years (plus the other 10 years the previous owners lived here). After 15 years of neglect… it was GROSS.

With having already simplified and organized it, I decided to put in the bit of effort it would take to finally do the job. And the difference was phenomenal.

pantry refresh: step by step

step 1:

Empty your cupboards, again. If I had properly thought this through I wouldn’t have had to empty and refill so many times. But there I was. And the contents lived on our peninsula for…. longer than I thought they would.

step 2:

Remove shelving. For me, this involved white wire racks that I found out in the process were made by Rubbermaid. While removing the shelves, I managed to break almost all of the little clips on the back of the shelves that helped support the weight on them. This was probably the most annoying part of my pantry refresh. But I conquered in the end, they were all removed.

step 3:

Clean the heck out of those walls and floor. Saying they were gross was an understatement. And it wasn’t until I took literally everything out that I could see it all, staring me in the face. Soap, warm water and a washcloth took care of all that would come off. There were still scrapes and black marks, but that’s why I was painting.

step 4:

Paint the pantry. A fresh coat of paint has to be one the quickest and not too expensive ways to refresh a space. I used a roller and some basic paint roll covers for the bulk of it. And an angled brush at the edges. I didn’t tape because I’m lazy and I knew paint would come off easy from our molding (as learned in previous experiences). Plus it was inside a pantry and no one is ever going to look that close at it. At least until the next person paints it.

I bought the paint at lowes. I went with the Valspar Ultra Semi-Gloss in the color “Boughs of Pine”. Semi-gloss seemed the appropriate choice based on just how dirty the wall were before. The white paint was flat and hard to clean. A semi-gloss will be much easier to wipe down. It took a bit to decide on the color I wanted. And even though most people liked the other green “Billiard Room”, I went with my gut and I am so happy I did! It ended up being the exact color I had imagined in my head. I know all the cool kids of instagram are doing a green with a blue hue to it, but I do what I want.

step 5:

Put those shelves back in. Make sure and clean them before you put them back in. Another trip to Lowes secured some new shelf clips, which is how I found out that my shelves were Rubbermaid. It’s a very specific clip. And I wanted to use the same kind as I already had holes ready to go. Byrdie helped me put it back together; she loves helping with the projects I’m working on and I love having the time with her.

step 6:

Put that food back where it came from or so help me (so help me!). And so my food was organized, yet again. I did end up buying two more sets of containers for my pantry. Not necessarily needed, but I loved having it match my other stuff. Plus, I have a container problem :). After trying out all the lids on all the containers at Wal-Mart, I came home with this set. They were pretty, the lids worked well, and it came in a set of 3 for $15, which is really a good price for this kind of container. I also found the set that I have already that have lasted for years. It comes in 4 different sizes and is only $8. This is probably the best value for containers I’ve seen. And I know they hold up after using them for near on 10 years. I found them in store and you cannot buy online for some silly reason. So you’ll have to make the trek to your local Wal-Mart for this deal.

small project, big results

In the end I spent $14 on paint and $6 on new clips for this pantry refresh. And the rest of the supplies I already had. For $20 I added a lot of personality to a usually looked over space. It seemed like such a small change. But it made a huge impact on not just how it looked, but how I looked at it. It’s amazing that a simple coat of paint can help you love your space again, even if it is just a pantry.

Have you given any of your spaces a little refresh lately? Is there a neglected spot that could use a little love or update? It doesn’t have to be a big change, or an expensive change, just a little change to make your home feel more like your home.

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spice rack organization

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 18:42:00 GMT

Spice rack organization has been something I’ve struggled with for years. Not that I didn’t have organization, just that I didn’t like the way it was organized.

the spinning rack

When the husband and I were first married we received a spinning spice rack for our wedding. And we loved it. It kept everything in one place. But it quickly lost it’s appeal do to space. There was no room to add more spices. It took up valuable counter space in our little aparments. A lot of spice bottles were too tall for it anyway. And a lot of the spices that were on it, honestly, I did not use. I can say that some of them I NEVER used. And yet I kept it, cause spinning & pretty! So the rest of the spices we bought ended up… somewhere.

This is close to what we had, it’s a pre-filled spinning spice rack . I like to buy the spices as I go, so I now only have what I use.

the shelf rack

But when we moved into our house we put the spices up over the microwave, which is above the stove. Did I mention that I am 5’5. Not short, but not tall by any means either. Seeing beyond a first row was impossible. So I bought a little 3 tiered shelf rack that fit perfectly in the space. I could now see the labels, but then I REALLY couldn’t reach them. Plus, it wasn’t nearly big enough for the amount of spices I had acquired.

But I think this little shelf rack would be a great option for those who have a cupboard shelf that is low enough. And if you have minimal spices or enough room to fit more than one. This spice rack organization option is also inexpensive, which is a total bonus. I actually do still use this rack, only now it holds my tea.

the door rack

Flash forward to last year and I found a solution that worked perfectly for us. The most amazing door rack . Technically, you can also screw it into a wall.

It has room for all of our spices. Plus plenty of extra shelves for overflow to my little pantry. This rack can be either be hung over the door, which we had for a while, but it would bang every time you opened and closed the door. So we screwed it in and haven’t looked back since. There’s enough space to close the door still! People, it’s the little things that make this lady happy.

They also have this smaller version if you don’t have a large door to put it on. These would fit right onto a cupboard door or a little patch of wall.

the drawer rack

While I’m here, I’ve been seeing a lot of people using drawer organizers for their spice rack organization. I have not tried this out as I have a total of THREE drawers in my entire kitchen. Which is probably my only complaint space wise. But for those of you with ALL THE DRAWERS people love these little guys.

This plastic one from amazon has great reviews! And this bamboo drawer organizer is super cute! And this flat one , the most basic of them all. All under $15 on Amazon.

They are at a great height and I can you can see all of them clearly. I think the downside of these would be the amount of spices you could fit, or the height of the spice bottles. The latter could be fixed with a solution that I used on my own spice rack. Segway!

spice up your spice jars

Too cheesy? You’re probably right. But we’ll continue on anyway.

Remember that spinning spice rack from earlier? Well I kept it on my counter until this past year when I got my door spice rack. But did I get rid of those spices? No! I wasn’t done NOT using them yet! Never mind how OLD they were. And part of me is now glad I didn’t. I think what kept me hanging on was how cute the little glass jars were. So I did what was unthinkable for nearly 10 years. I dumped out all the spices!

What I was left with was cute little jars. I spent a day cleaning them, removing the labels, which was a process of it’s own. I soaked them, took off the top layer of label, soaked them again, rubbed off the paper and finally removed the sticky residue with Goo Gone and a rag. All worth it when I had clean and shiny jars to fill.

I moved all of my smaller basic spices that were in their not so pretty store bottles and put them into my jars. And oh the pretty colors! With my larger spices, like garlic and onion powder, I just removed the label from their plastic bottle. We’ve been buying our super basic spices at Aldi lately. Their labels come off super easy and they had a plain black lid that matched the black lids on my smaller glass bottles. It was perfect.

Can you guess what I did next? I labeled the heck out of everything! The plain jars + the old school labels from my dymo manual label maker are heaven. I am so pleased with how these turned out.

don’t have extra bottles lying around?

The internet is here for you. And so am I. You can buy glass spice jars for your spice rack organization on Amazon. These come with labels already if you don’t have a label maker. You can also personalize it to your own decor with a little bit of spray paint on the lids. Personally, I’m all about gold lately and would go that way. But black will take through years to come and will match a lot of the store bought bottles.

find these spice rack organization links on Pinterest

I also set up a Pinterest account where I will pin items and ideas related to blog posts. All the links in this post, and my other pantry organizing post , can be found there in the Pantry Organization board . Or you can click on that Pinterest icon over there on the side for.

So have you all cleaned out your spice rack lately? Could it use a spice rack organization intervention? What are you favorite spice racks or tips?

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pantry organization

Thu, 31 Jan 2019 23:14:00 GMT

Did you all clean out your pantries ? Of all the things you can organize, pantry organization, has to be one of the more boring for me. I mean, I still love it, cause I’m an organizational nerd. But there’s only so much beauty that can be added to a pantry, ya know?

For those of us that have small to tinyish pantries (maybe even just some cupboards?) it’s always a task to see how we can use that space to the best of it’s abilities. We’ll take mine as example numero uno, because honestly, I can’t see yours. But as most pantries contain more or less the same thing (food) can we agree that basics are basics?

My pantry comes with 5 shelves and a floor as a bonus. So 6 little surfaces to put our family of 5’s food on. We’ll go from top to bottom.

Shelf # 1 (the highest shelf)

Also, this shelf is so high that I can’t put anything else on it or I can’t reach it. Closed boxes of cereal get tucked away behind the open ones. Same with chips. Do ya’ll have a high shelf? What do you put on yours?

Shelf # 2 (the second highest)

This shelf really ends up being a weird mix of things. This shelf keeps mostly whole ingredients that just need to be put with other ingredients, or on top of.

Shelf #3 (the prepackaged carb shelf, one of my favorite shelves)

Shelf #4 (food storage worthy items)

Shelf #5 (where the baking stuff goes)

Storage Ideas for Pantry Organization

This shelf is full of see through containers showing all the basic ingredients you might need. I like having the see through containers for this one, it brings block of color to the space without being busy. It’s also good to see how much of each ingredient that I have, so I know when I need to buy more. I bought these years ago, probably around the time I got married. I can’t find them on the Wal-Mart website, where I got them, but I swear I saw them at the store recently. If not, there seems to be some new stuff that looks pretty good.

These “Rubbermaid Modular Food Storage Containers” seem to be what replaced mine. Perfect for pantry organization. There’s sets of smaller ones, and then you can buy some bigger ones for your flour an sugar if needed. This is a good budget friendly option, and should last for years. Also, all the lids are the same size, which makes them easily stackable (how is this not a word??), which is a huge bonus when keeping things organized.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rubbermaid-Modular-Food-Storage-Container-16-Cup/38664659

These also look great if you have a bit more money to throw at storage…

https://www.target.com/p/rubbermaid-brilliance-6pc-pantry-airtight-food-storage-container-set/-/A-53663904

https://www.target.com/p/rubbermaid-brilliance-8pc-pantry-airtight-food-storage-container-set/-/A-53663905

And this my friends, has been my best friend the last couple of weeks since it’s purchase for my pantry organization. It really needs a name for how much work it’s put in. I also baptized it in bacon fat this morning, so there’s that. Feel free to do the same if you want that delicious bacon-y smell on it for…. a while? Baby wipes and toothpicks to clean it out after it has been dunked.

And the best part is you can get it at target or office max for around $10. Just be careful when you reload the tape. Mine got all mixed up, but I fixed it right up and continued on.

https://www.target.com/p/label-maker-organizer-xpress-pro-black-dymo/-/A-53006275

The Floor aka Shelf #6 (the last one, woo) & (more dry ingredients)

https://www.target.com/p/y-weave-large-curved-rectangle/-/A-53816638?preselect=50253743#lnk=sametab

If you’re still with me, congratulations! You’ve almost made it to the end.

A few ending thoughts…

1. We used to keep our plastic bags, you know the ones, in a another plastic bag on the floor shelf (until this week, haha). But Aldi is selling a bag holder this week for $6.99. I’m going to hang it just inside the garage door, which is right by my kitchen. Then I don’t have to look at that ugly mess in my day to day.

2. If I had a bigger pantry, like one of those big walk in kind, I would put all of my random appliances on one of the shelves. Keep them all in a nice pretty row. And easily accessible. And maybe keep the plastic bags in there too if I had wall space.

3. If I had more food, or a bigger pantry, I would buy more baskets to separate food or really, to keep it together. But since mine is so small I really don’t think it’s necessary. Plus, it’s more cost effective this way ;).

And for your sake, I’ll end the pantry organization, and save the spice rack for the next post, your welcome.

So what are you favorite pantry organization tips? Do you have a system you love? Now it’s time to go forth and organize it! Take a day or two and think about how you use your food. And send me pictures of your organized pantries!

PS – Do any of you use the plastic bins for cereal and pasta? I’m not sure if it would be useful for us or not. But I do think they look nice. Plus, I could label them.

PPS – If you want any help on anything specific for you pantry organization, I would be glad to talk and recommend things! This goes for anywhere in your house really.

K, bye.

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pantry clean out

Tue, 29 Jan 2019 22:23:00 GMT

This week I thought we’d take a bit of a dive into the little world of pantries. Ok, well, my pantry is little, tiny even? But it holds all we need for our family of 5. My tiny pantry has seen it’s share of clean outs, of reorganizations, of things flying everywhere because of the shear amount of stuff that we kept in it. I used to think I needed a bigger pantry. What I really needed was a reality check of all the food that we were eating, or more often, not eating. My garbage can will tell the tales of stale food, moldy food, and 5 years expired food. But only recently do I have a better understanding of what we actually need. Chow Mein noodles? Nope. White rice? Yup.

We were wasting food. We were wasting money. And we were wasting valuable space in our little pantry. Shopping trips used to happen every two weeks, with another little shopping trip for essentials and perishables. It worked for us for a while. But we were making more and more shopping trips. Not eating the food we had already bought, because we couldn’t see it in our crammed cupboards.

Now shopping trips happen every week. We buy exactly how much food we need. I make a menu for the week, make sure the kids have food for lunches, and add a few extras for flexibility and fun.

Some tips to help you clean out your pantry.

In the next post, we’ll talk more about actually organizing what you kept. And you can follow along with me on Instagram.

https://www.instagram.com/live.simply.sheri/

How do you guys like to shop? A couple days at a time or a month at a time? Is there any food you can stop pretending your going to eat and get rid of (cough, brown rice, cough). What are you favorite staples? Let me know if the comments, I’d love to hear from you.

*And if you found this helpful at all, share on social media!*

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something about a pancake

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 03:17:00 GMT

Hello! Welcome!

This is the part where I introduce myself? My name is Sheri. I’m a wifey and mama of 3. I live on the outskirts of the St. Louis metro area and love the Midwest. I like burgers, and books, and adventuring. Does this feel like a dating website intro? I feel like it feels like a dating website intro. I’m just going to move this post on a bit…

How did I end up here?

I like blogging. I’ve always liked blogging. You should talk to high school Sheri about her blog. It was all the best cringe-worthy posts you can imagine a 2000’s angsty teenager could write.

But, I haven’t blogged in years.

I’ve wanted to. It didn’t feel like the right time. And honestly, I was scared to put that much of myself out there, I still am. But I’m listening to the little (ok, maybe big) nudge that is telling me to start now. I feel like the last year put me on a path to where I am now, but more, where I am going.

2018 was brutal. It was one of those years that WOULD. NOT. QUIT. But through it I found myself finding ways to handle all the stupid that was thrown at me. And a large part of that was through minimizing and organizing that “stuff” that had taken over my life. That journey is no where near complete, so I thought I’d bring ya’ll on for the ride.

I imagine Live.Simply.Sheri to be parts: living simply + organizing + a touch of decor + some mama blogging + photography tips + favorite things.

I’m excited and kind of nauseous to send this first pancake into the world, but here it is.

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