More Than a Little

I kept waiting around to post about my stockpile until I got it all perfectly organized.  It has occured to me that I will never get it perfectly organized, especially since things change so often with the addition (and removal!) of items every week.  Evie and I spent a long while in there one day last week and it’s close enough that I’m not too ashamed to show the pictures off.  She LOVES it out there. So much to look at! So much to tear off the shelves!  These photos are strategically composed so that you can’t see the mess she’s making in the floor while I’m trying to take these pictures. Artistic license.  I want to start off by saying that my stockpile is a little extreme compared to the one I would like everyone to have.  I have the space, I have the time, I have the mad organizational skillz to enjoy this sort of thing.

Okay, disclaimer out of the way.  This room is off my laundry room, and when you come through the door, the far wall is what I affectionately call my cereal wall.   Most of the cereal cost between $1 and $1.50 a box.  That’s a lot more than many hardcore deal shoppers would pay but we both eat cereal for breakfast almost every day.  The dates are all good, and the boxes are stacked so that the dates are visible with a glance. I foresee no problem in eating these before they go bad–as a matter of fact, this stack has been greatly rotated from the original cereal wall already.  FYI: I eat Life cereal almost all of the time.  It’s by far my favorite.

I love my cereal wall, almost as much as I love the pop wall.  These are my two favorite areas right now because they just look so well stacked.  Please note that the expiration dates on the Pepsi are mostly September and October, so we have plenty of time to drink them (they’re also stacked so that the dates are visible, and we work through them from left to right in order of expiration.)  These were purchased for about $1.57 each–prices that low are really rare so I stocked up majorly.  I wish I’d bought more, of course, but at the time it seemed excessive.  The Fresca is M’s.  Coke products are even more expensive than Pepsi products, and worse yet, they don’t carry Fresca at the drugstores.  Terrible, really.

This is an almost gratuitous picture of my baby being “helpful” while I work on the room. :) She’s wearing her “My Heart Belongs to Grandpa” shirt–I’m sure he will approve.  However, it does show my four bags of dog food (free with coupon, but no dog) and a small stack of bottled water.  Non-stockpile storage stuff is in the far corner.

Above the water and dog food is a shelf with paper towels and diapers.  We go through paper towels very slowly.  The Sparkle I actually bought without using coupons before I got into this last year.  The diapers were all either free or insanely cheap, but not in Evelyn’s size.  Her current or future diapers are in her room, either in her closet, under the crib or more commonly, spread out over the floor so she can climb on them and stack them up like giant, weird blocks.

Turning around to face the wall the door is on, there’s a big black bookcase that I re-appropriated from my husband’s garage.  We have built-in bookcases in this house, so this bookcase was being under-used in the garage, so I took it back.  It’s kind of a mess, I fear, but there’s not much I can do about it right now.  The top two shelves are out of Evelyn’s easy reach, so they are dedicated to medicines and breakables.  I tend to just stack things anywhere they’ll fit because there is just no good way to display everything well.  We have everything from Tylenol to Ben Gay to Mylanta.  As soon as I find a large, sturdy box, I’m going to clean that top shelf out and pack the unwanted meds up for a yard sale.

The next three shelves are more random. I’m particularly fond of the aluminum foil column on the far right.  I feel like I should defend my procesed food choices on the next shelf.  Most of the boxed mashed potatoes were free, overage-producing or ridiculously cheap (like, twenty cents.)  I use them, but not nearly as often as I should to warrant the giant stack.  The mac and cheese belongs to M.  He’s a kid at heart.  And of course, the bottom shelf is full of wipes. Looks like seven tubs and six refill packages.  I’ve given a few away, even.  I am well-stocked on wipes.

On top of the bookcase, I have a tub full of Glade.  Lots of Glade.  Does anyone pay for Glade?

Wedged into the corner between the bookcase and the wall, there’s a plastic storage unit stacked with more stuff.  The clear tub is full of random papery products–only partially a stockpile item.  Above that, we have the diabetes testing kits (oh, nine of them at the moment, I think)  We also have a giant pile of toothpaste there.  I can’t even imagine how much toothpaste that is, and I gave most of it away at Christmas.  That entire bag is full of toothpaste, for one thing.  This section needs work but we’re planning on adding another shelf to the wall units (which were there when we moved in) so that should help.

Here you see the drawers open a little.  The top is over-full with razors.  Ideally, the second shelf is for makeup and that sort of thing, but right now, it’s collecting overflow from the top drawer.  The bottom shelf is baby-related items.

Now, the wall beside the door has a standing set of shelves attached to it.  I’ve taken over the bottom shelves for the stockpile. Actually, this was our original stockpile, period.  It has sort of outgrown this location a little bit, though!  This is where the shampoo, hair products, body wash, face cleansers, etc go.  I counted over twenty Garnier Fructis products the other day. Again, does anyone pay for that stuff?  So very often it’s free. Amusingly enough, I was using generic Garnier shampoo back when I started coupon shopping.

Now we have the canned soup type of products.  The corn box is full of chicken stock.  The two levels of cans are chicken stock. I actually do have more than I need but there was a sale…

This used to be in our pantry in the kitchen, but we removed it and put real wooden shelves back in intsead. It lives in our little room now as inefficent storage. I mainly put canned stuff in here, but it’s terribly inconvenient. I rarely remember where anything is. Still, here it is.