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Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to The Decluttered Mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, and in 2017 I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show. Welcome to another episode of The Decluttered Mom podcast.

Diana Rene: 0:52

Today, we are doing a call-in episode and I love these. I think they're so fun because they remind me of, like the old school radio shows where people would call in and ask a question, and it's just kind of fun and nostalgic. And also it helps me to connect to you guys because I can actually hear your voice and hear what your question is and be able to reply directly back to you and, at the same time, helping anyone else who has a similar question or frustration or anything like that. If you have a question for me that you would like to get played on the show and have me answer your question right on the podcast.

Diana Rene: 1:33

You can go to the show notes and we have a link right to a website. It's super, super simple. You go there, you put in your name I think maybe your email and then you just push a button and you talk and you leave your question. I think you can even listen to it back first before you submit it, to make sure it's how you want it, and then you just hit send and that's it. It's super, super easy. We put a lot of time our team put a lot of time into finding the software that would make it the easiest possible for you guys. So we pay for a software to be able to do it, even though there's free ones out there, because we wanted to make it as easy as possible. So if that's you, if you have a question and you want to maybe be on a future episode, then please go to that link in the show notes and you can leave your question. Let's get to today's call-in and you can leave your question. Let's get to today's call-in.

Katie: 2:28

Hi, my name is Katie, from Michigan, and my question is without a pantry, how do I store the bulk grocery items and paper supplies that I buy from Costco? Often they end up on the counter or shoved in a corner of the kitchen and make the whole space just look cluttered and visually stressful. What can I do?

Diana Rene: 2:47

Okay. So, Katie, hi, first of all, I love this question because in my old house it was just a smaller house in general and a smaller kitchen in general, so I ran into this problem myself, and then in my current house, it's a much bigger kitchen than I used to have, but a much smaller pantry. I know that you said, though, you have no pantry, so zero pantry, and it sounds like you like to buy things in bulk. So the first thing that I would want to do is declutter your kitchen, which I know isn't fun, because the kitchen can feel really intense and overwhelming, and we actually don't in my program, we actually don't even tackle the kitchen until much later in the home, because it is overwhelming, because we just tend to hold a lot of things in there that you think you're going to use at some point, so it's hard to let go. But if you can declutter in your kitchen, that's always a great starting point, and you probably knew you were going to hear that from me, because it's just the number one solution, or at least the number one starting point. Even when a kitchen is fully decluttered, if there just isn't a lot of space in the kitchen and there's zero pantry, then most of the time there needs to be additional steps that are taken for it to work Right. So what I would do, like I said, number one declutter, so that way you can hopefully open up some space in the kitchen that you can use to store some of these items. But if you have like you're like Diana, I have gotten rid of as much as I can possibly get rid of and I still don't have the space, then I would look where else in your home can be what I would consider what I call a backstock area.

Diana Rene: 4:40

So for us we have part of a closet on the first floor of our house. Most of it is used for like shoe storage coats, like winter coats, winter hats, stuff like that. That is where also my girls have like hooks for their coats, their backpacks, that's where we keep their bins for all of their schoolwork, and then the right side of that closet is our back stock, so on. In there we have things that we buy from Costco. So I like to stock up on specific snacks at Costco when I see them, because one of my kids has severe food allergies and dietary restrictions and so some of the snacks that she can safely have don't stick at Costco very long because if they don't have like tons of sales, so there's a lot of like allergy type snacks that if they have them, I'm going to stock up on them, and so I might buy three or four boxes of these specific gluten nut free granola bars, but there's no way I have space for that in my small pantry, and so they go into the backstock area.

Diana Rene: 5:50

Now, something to remember, even for a backstock area, is that the packaging that these items, especially from Costco and these like bigger boxes are coming in tend to take up way more space in the storage than they really need to. So I recommend actually decanting them when possible, into a different package that you could just fit things better in. So if I have three boxes worth of these allergy-friendly granola bars, then I'm probably going to take them out of the cardboard boxes they came in that take up twice the space as the actual granola bars and put them into a different container. The caveat to that is that if you are storing this someplace like basement or garage, I would 100% make sure that the container you're putting them in is closed, like has a lid that you can snap on, and the reason I say that is because if you have any potential for rodents getting into your garage or your basement which everyone has that potential you don't want to have just open snack season for them. So I always make sure if it's someplace that's really off. I mean, I even do it in my closet so that will tell you where my risk level is.

Diana Rene: 7:03

But especially if you're going to be doing any type of backstock in your basement, garage, anything like that, please, buying containers that have a lid that you can snap shut to hopefully not worry about that, but by having this backstock area you are not taking up the valuable real estate in your kitchen. You can kind of be a little more creative. At my old house, honestly, I had to do backstock underneath my bed and so I would buy like those bins that are like really long but very short, they're meant to go under your bed and again they have the lids that snap onto them. So I felt like it was like contained really well. So I would put backstock there in one of those bins and like put the lid on, snap it shut and store it under my bed. So you can be creative with backstock areas while not taking up that valuable real estate in your kitchen, especially if you don't have a lot of space in there to begin with.

Diana Rene: 8:04

But if you are like I don't have anywhere like that, then we need to. At that point we need to have the discussion of maybe we can't be buying so much in bulk. We need to have the discussion of maybe we can't be buying so much in bulk. And I get that that's frustrating because people like to buy in bulk. They save money a lot of times when they're buying in bulk and so they feel like they need to be able to buy in bulk. But if we don't have the space for it, then we have to have that conversation of either cutting back on buying in bulk or just not doing it at all. And that's kind of where you have to determine if that's going to be possible for you, based on the space that you have available to you in your home. Because even if something does save you money, like being able to buy in bulk, if you don't have the space for it, all it's doing is stressing you out because it's like you said, it's taking over the countertops in your kitchen, and so that's what I would do.

Diana Rene: 9:02

Number one declutter. Number two find a backstock area that makes sense. Number three buy different types of containers that you can put that backstock in to make even better use of that space. And number four if none of that can work because of the limited space in your home, then it's time to consider maybe not buying in bulk, rewinding a little bit to step. Number three with the containers you don't have to go to the container store and buy expensive containers. You have so many options now with Amazon and Walmart and even like Dollar Tree, there are so many very inexpensive containers that you can now purchase, even compared to like three or four years ago. So look around, look on Amazon, look at Walmart, go to your local family dollar or dollar tree, because you will find a lot of things like that that will absolutely work in your space and you can do it for a less expensive situation. If you're like I don't really care about saving money, I just really want it to look nice, then you can by all means go to the container store and buy pretty aesthetic containers, but you can also still do that at a lesser cost at some of the other places as well.

Diana Rene: 10:23

So, katie, I hope that was helpful for you. I'd love to say hi to you Shoot me a DM on Instagram and again, you guys, if you would like to have your question answered by me on one of these future episodes. We've only had one or two of these so far and we got really great feedback about it, so that was fun. I'd love to continue doing these and just go ahead and go to the link and send me your question and maybe I'll be able to answer it on the next call-in show. Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedeclutteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.