De-Clutter!

I feel good today. Like, really really good. I made a commitment yesterday to keep my life uncluttered, to minimize my waste and the stuff I have. Because, seriously, how many stuff does one person need anyway?

Yesterday, I got an epiphany. "You must clean your pantry," said that little voice in my head. I still cannot figure out if the voice is a he or she. It just always sounds neutral. Anyway, so I did exactly that. After I took my dogs for their morning walk, I had a slice of vegetable lasagna that I made two days before as breakfast. This lasagna, by the way, is delicious. And healthy, because I used eggplant, portabello mushrooms, spinach, broccoli, ground turkey meat and veggie shreds (which is cheese made from soy and is lactose-free). Now, I am off the track again. Anyway, after the lasagna then I was off to working on the pantry.

The un-cluttered and organized pantry. No "before" pictures. Too embarassing.

My pantry has always been a total mess. I open it more than ten times a day and every single time I hate it more and more. It had everything in it, cooking utilities, canned food, dog food, and all other sort of things. But the part that mostly hurt the most was seeing the amount of plastic bags from all the grocery shopping everyone in my household had been doing for the last one and a half year. The amount of plastics were just overwhelming. The container could no longer contained them and I just knew that soon enough those plastics would take over the whole pantry.

So I started with those plastics. I put them in the two biggest plastic bags I could find and scrunched them in like I really really hate them. I folded 15 of those plastics into triangles and divided them to the three bathrooms in the house to be used as trash cans plastics. I then started the pantry cleaning, de-cluttering and re-arranging. I ended up doing that to the whole kitchen, throwing away foods and stuff I had never even realized were there or I had never used in more than one year. The result was absolutely satisfying! Now I have so much space and my pantry is immaculate and organized. I feel more comfortable cooking and navigating in my small kitchen.

It is amazing how de-cluttering the messiest part of the house can make me feel this good. It is like a heavy weight has been lift off of my shoulders and I am left with things that I really need, not things that I  thought I needed. I did not even realized that the messy pantry was actually that big of a problem. Maybe, inside, I was identifying that messy pantry to myself and cleaning it made me feel like I was opening myself to newer, better possibilities. Yes, maybe so.

From all of the things I found laying uselessly inside the pantry, I found 3 reusable shopping bags. So today, for the very first time, I did my grocery shopping and did not take home a single plastic bag. I feel soooooo good! I feel like I am actually doing something right for once. Haha. I also put all the plastic bags I had to a recycle box outside HEB (the grocery store).

I am ready to change the way I live. More than de-cluttering and organizing my house, I am ready to de-clutter and organize my life. Please Universe, do not let me forget and wander off.

Love,

Andini

Baked Salmon with Cilantro-Garlic Oil

I made this salmon dish for dinner last night and it was phenomenal! Easy, quick and phenomenal! We had it with rice and herb salad. I used the remaining cilantro-garlic oil as salad dressing. Yumm!

Baked Salmon with Cilantro-Garlic Oil