The Deep, Dark Chasm of Crap

I'm pretty sure every house has one, weather it's a closet, a spare room or a corner of the attic or basement...that dark place that holds a bunch of miscellaneous junk.  That corner/closet/alcove that you just throw crap into, shut the door/turn around and walk away.  No matter where it is in your house it becomes that dead zone, that black hole of crap that you ignore yet it slowly eats away at your soul.  For us, it was our kitchen pantry.  

Since our house was built in the 1920s it doesn't have any closets in the livingroom or dining room for coats and assorted junk.  So, when we were unpacking, which took quite sometime (I blame it on the fact we were moving two people's junk into a space much larger than the apartments I was used to), our pantry became the place we shoved crap into.  Mainly it was kitchen related junk...toaster, crock pot, assorted food items, spices, etc.  But there were also a couple of boxes of random sh*t that got shoved in there.  

We were initially excited about having a pantry to store things in since our kitchen is pretty tiny and our cupboard and counter space is limited!  But there were a couple problems with the pantry.  It was a little less than four feet wide and about 5 feet deep, yet you couldn't walk into it.  There were metal racks on either side of the pantry when you opened the door.  The left side rack was ideal for spices since it was fairly shallow.  The right side rack, on the other hand, jutted out about a foot and a half and kept you from easily entering the space.  And so, the "chasm of crap" grew...

Since it had been that place that we initially threw junk into and you couldn't actually "get in there" to get junk out or organize it...we continued to throw stuff in, at random.  This led to a disheveled kitchen pantry that had food in it, but you couldn't exactly see what all was in there.  So, after a year of living in the house I cannot even tell you how many boxes of angel hair pasta were in there because I didn't know that we already had some and would buy more at the store.  It wasn't only massive amounts of pasta and other food items, it was also things falling off shelves because they had been thrown in there haphazardly...leading to spilling and breaking.  All in all, it was not good.  The pantry had become a definite eye sore and a source of great frustration.  Finally, I had enough...

A couple weekends ago Antoine and I finally decided to tackle the beast.  We took out EVERYTHING...the food, the appliances, the random crap that didn't belong in there.  We took out the shelves that didn't fit and were covered with about 10 layers of contact paper.  And, we took out the metal racks.  Namely we removed that got awful rack that practically attached your face when you opened the door. 

 There it is, in all it's evilness!  

Next we decided to update the dingy white paint, and here's where we might have went a little mad...we painted it bright orange!  Our kitchen is a really muted green and I had been dying to paint something bright orange for a while now (but decided I was too chicken to actually paint a room orange...since I've never really liked orange before?!  FYI: I'm weird and make no sense!)  So the pantry became orange...bright ass orange.  (Sidenote: it was hilarious to go to Home Depot and buy such a ridiculous color...we got so many appalled looks from people who thought we were actually painting a room that color!  It was a riot!)

So, here it is...

No longer a casm of crap!  Instead, an organized and accessible pantry.

 

 

With the help of my Dad we cut and painted some shelves that actually fit into the space and weren't covered with 50 years of contact paper.

Now the pantry has become a source of peace.  I actually open the door, take a deep breath in and out and just look at it.  Now there is space for EVERYTHING and I can easily walk in and get anything I need!  It's just a wonderful feeling.

Additional note:  apparently I cannot spell "chasm".