Friday, July 8, 2011

Seven Steps to a Healthy Pantry: Step 3

Step 3: Clean House

Okay, you’ve searched your heart to figure out your motivation.  You’ve done your research so you know what we’re talking about.  Now it’s time to get your hands dirty.

First, take out pen and paper and write a one sentence goal for your Great Pantry Clean-Out. 

For example, my one sentence would look like this:

I want to remove all non-organic food from my pantry.

It could also look like this:

I need to remove anything that has gluten (or, insert your allergy here).

Or, one last example:

I want to reduce the amount of processed foods in my pantry so that processed foods represent only 25% of the food we eat in a week.

Second, tape this sentence inside your pantry door or in a place that you will see it every time you go to the pantry.  You might want to make a copy of your goal and put it with your grocery list or in your wallet – some place you’ll see it when you’re at the grocery store.

Third, start removing what you don’t want.  When I went through this the first time I removed all gluten-containing snacks and packed them up for a friend who had kids my own kids’ ages.  You could donate the goods to a soup kitchen.  You could host a “I’m throwing out the junk!” party and invite friends over to get rid of all the outgoing items.

Don’t forget the spice drawer.  (If you are allergic or sensitive to gluten, for example, your spices need to be examined.  If you’re going all-organic, you definitely need to address the spices.)

This will be my shortest post during this series because you’ve got work to do.  J  Have fun!  And send me before and after pictures. 

3 comments:

  1. I find it hilarious that I'm eating Goldfish crackers and drinking Dr Pepper at 10 am while reading this post. :D I guess I'm not "there" yet. haha

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  2. Hmmm, I may have to revisit this goal writing statement AFTER vacation.

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  3. I like the idea of removing the processed foods from our diets. I will have to figure out how this works in my monthly meal plan this month or evoke it for next month.

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