I am standing in the middle of my pantry befuddled and lost. A small 5 x 8 foot room. Shelves on three walls. A large peg board for pots and pans on the fourth wall.

I know what you’re thinking. A grown man might get lost at the airport. He might get turned around and lose his way inside the Smithsonian. Drop a fella in the middle of the Kansas prairie and his internal compass might not know where to turn.

But this is a pantry. My pantry for the last 30 years. No way I could be lost in here.

Before I get to that, let me explain something to you. There are two important pieces of information that factor into my current state of confusion.

Although I can realistically call this “my pantry”, the pantry has never been a room over which I have held any control. For the first 25 years it was Beth’s pantry. I almost never bought anything that went into that room unless I was asked to buy it. If I did buy something for the pantry, I walked into the kitchen, laid the sack on the countertop, and my responsibility for that item ended at that point.

I did not put things in the pantry. I did not organize the pantry. I did not question the contents of the pantry. Once every now and then I might enter the pantry to retrieve a new jar of Miracle Whip in order to make my ham and cheese sandwich, but other than that, I stayed clear. My interactions with the pantry over the years have been limited, to say the least.

The other key piece of information is this. Even though I have enthusiastically renovated, rearranged, and reorganized nearly every room in this house over the last five years I have steered clear of making any changes in the pantry other than replacing the flooring.

And when I did that, I had to clear out all the contents including all the shelving. Then when I finished with the floor all the shelves and contents went back into the pantry exactly as they had been removed. I’m not a pantry guy, so I figured if it was in there, it had a purpose and needed to remain as it was and had been since before the turn of the century.

So, for the last five years, since the pantry has truly been mine, I have stocked it as I saw fit. Anything I don’t use gets shoved to the side. If I don’t know what it is or what it’s for, I assume that one day I might discover it’s use. I have thrown away almost nothing.

The change in the pantry that started with the cake mix boxes a few weeks ago got accelerated last Friday night when Marion reached for a spray can of oil to season one of my cast iron frying pans.

“This doesn’t smell right,” she said.

A closer whiff and she drew back like she was holding a rancid mouse.

“How old is this stuff?”

“I don’t have any clue. I guess it’s been in here a while.”

She turned the can over to look at the date on the bottom.

“O, my word. May 2005!”

“That might be a little bit old.”

“It’s a wonder we’re not all dead.”

It was around 7pm when we made this earth shattering discovery in my pantry. I gave her the shoulder shrug and eye-roll that said I was just a dumb guy. I work around these things.

“Well,” she said, “we ain’t going to bed until we clean out this pantry.”

We worked through each shelf one item at a time. I’m embarrassed to tell you that the expiration dates we found were almost hideous. An unopened and discolored jar of Karo syrup, August 2021. Campbell’s soup, April 2021. Strawberry Jell-O mix, February 2019. An unopened jar of garlic dipping oil, June 2014. A box of chicken bouillon cubes, September 2001.

We filled a box the size of a small wheelbarrow with outdated goods. But the work didn’t end with the food items.

“Why do you have paper goods on three different shelves in here? Plus, I know you have some in two different cabinets in the kitchen.”

My best answer. “Because that’s where they’ve always been.”

This is when my pantry world really started to shift. Marion pulled out a pack of sticky notes and a Sharpie. It was game on.

“You’ve got your flour and cornmeal up here and your sugar down there. These really need to be on the same shelf. Baking goods go together.”

“And look here, you’ve got some of your seasoning jars on two different shelves on this side, and way over here you’ve got a handful of seasoning packets. All of this should be in one place.”

I was hauling stuff out of the pantry into the kitchen to make room for all the reassignments. As one new handily organized shelf appeared I’d haul stuff back in to be placed on a new shelf under a new sticky note heading.

In this process I found out that “tear-open packets” is not a viable pantry category unto itself. I had been keeping anything from instant potatoes and instant rice to Lipton onion soup and buttermilk biscuit mix together in one place. Foil packets that tear open. That made sense in my head.

I was wrong. Rice goes with the pasta. Soup in a box goes with the soups in a can. Buttermilk biscuit mix…that goes on the baking shelf with the flour.

“What about these plastic bowls up here?”

“I use two of them. I don’t think I’ve ever touched the other ones except to move them out of the way.”

That’s when we started the thrift store pile. Plastic serving trays that came from the Publix deli. Gadgets for which I had no use. A mixed batch of odd containers and lids. A Pampered Chef thingy.

“What about this?” I asked, holding it up.

“Those things are impossible to clean. Put it in the pile.”

And in the throw-away pile. Lost pieces of small appliances that went to be with Jesus decades ago, like the handle to a deep fry rack that I can’t even remember. Lids that had no containers. Containers that had no lids. A coffee maker that hadn’t worked in years.

The result of all of this is that I now have a well organized pantry with sticky note labels from top to bottom.

“I’ll bring my label maker next time I’m down here,” she says to me.

All the crackers are together. All the snacks are together. Most of the small appliances are off the floor and on a shelf. The drinks are together. The spices are in alphabetical order. And I have empty shelves waiting for their next assignment.

I’m standing here admiring my newly organized pantry. I honestly like it. Nothing out of date. Everything in its place. Marion is terrific when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Just one thing. I came in here looking for the peanut butter.

And I’m a little lost.