Passing the blame

I like to blame my kids for things. I blame them for a lot of things, in fact. I'd like to blame them for things like my waistline, but I think in fact that could be my gene's fault. I can certainly blame them for any grey hairs I get, but I don't have any yet. I'll definitely blame them for the broken window in the front door. And it wasn't from playing ball outside, you can be sure of that.

I can say, hand on heart, that the overhaul of my pantry was my kids fault. After all, there is only so many hundreds of times one can tell them to SHUT THE PANTRY DOORS! Well, one day I got sick of it, so I took the doors off and put them in the garage.

It worked brilliantly. 100% success. I can now say, hand on heart, that I have not had to tell my kids even once to SHUT THE PANTRY DOORS!

However, as I'm a normal mother, the inside of my pantry looked...well...rather a jumble. And since I had just taken so much effort to redecorate my kitchen in a pretty, vintage style, the piles of half-empty packets of flour and tea bags, bags of chippies and a very ugly microwave, along with plastic boards, electric frying pan, and bottles of oil and vinegar really let the whole room down. Isn't it funny how 99% of a room can look great, but the 1% that's at odds is all that you see?

So I had to do something about it of course.

Out came the pale blue gingham to make some gathered curtains for the unsightly wire baskets and extra packets of food. I emptied Uncle Bills of apothecaries jars and tipped every known baking supply into these. Now I had the problem that the kids can't tell the difference between salt and sugar; baking powder, baking soda, icing sugar and cornflour; and self-raising flour, plain flour and gluten-free flour! I printed off some cute labels and tied these on with brown string. The microwave 'luckily' stopped working properly so I replaced it with a little rounded white one, and all the plastic boards were replaced with wooden ones.

In the kitchen upgrading process by a previous owner, the butter-yellow formica bench tops had been replaced with granite everywhere except the pantry. I'll admit, it did brighten up the kitchen no end on a dull day, but it's not the kind of 'brightening up' that I am partial to. However there is nothing, and I mean nothing that paint can't fix, so with a coat of chalk-paint (adhere's to anything!) and a wax, it's now white.

I still need to find a way of removing the old catches and things but it's become quite a lovely view, rows of baking and cooking supplies on the shelves. One of these days it might inspire me to actually bake something!

But I think it's more likely the kids would actually shut a door before that would happen.