Pantry Makeover

So I have been getting really restless and can't focus on anything that is school related. I only have a week and a half left and its a good thing because I literally cannot take it anymore. I can't focus, I just can't seem to find the willpower. So today, after several failed attempts at studying, I decided to take on something that was driving me nuts... My Pantry.

I currently live in a small 3 bed 2 bath house with three other people: A married couple (T&G) and my former roommate (V). Because we have all lived on our own before living with each other, we have way too much stuff and have had to downsize, especially in the kitchen. Even after 6 months of living all together, we still have a lot of stuff and it tends to lead to heavy disorganization in the kitchen dept.
As for our pantry, it is just shy of being a walk in and we have divided the shelves according to:
1- Large storage, community storage, and animal food storage
2- V
3- T&G
4- Me
5- Tupperware
Floor- Alcohol
So with that being the layout I have exactly one shelf to house all of my pantry needs. We do not generally share our food with each other because everyone is very individual in their needs and wants and the logistics of trying to share would be a nightmare. Usually my shelf is pretty organized but lately I haven't been very careful and it is very easy for such a small amount of space to become out of hand. Plus it makes it hard to find anything so I never really know what I have or what I want to eat.

I apologize ahead of time for the crappy quality of all of the pictures in this post.  There isn't a light in our pantry.

So last week I needed to run some errands at Target and I decided to look into some super cute organizational baskets I had found via one of my favorite BLOGS and lo and behold, they were on sale! Hurray! Sales totally work in my broke college student budget! And what else? They just happen to come in my favorite color. You can't beat that!
At any rate I bought four and decided to leave them in my car until school was over buuuuut that was a fail. At least I waited a week right?
So I laid them out on my counter and started filling them with like things:

Snack Basket

Pasta/Lentils/Stuffing/Pasta Basket

Spices Basket

Cereal Basket

And then I put everything back into the pantry.

And now I feel so much better about my life and I can actually see everything that is in there. It is much more inspiring than before and it only took me about 10 minutes total. It's the little things that just make such a huge difference.

The Necessity of Work Out Buddies

When I was in high school, I was very very active. I was dancing around 30 hours a week between dance team at my school and studio classes and rehearsals. I ate constantly and not always the most healthily but it was okay because I was so active. In my sophomore year I had several adults in my life take me aside and ask me if I was struggling with eating disorders because I was 5'8" and weighed somewhere around 125lbs. I was teeny tiny. None of my friends bothered to ask me because they saw the absurd amount of food that I brought to school and ate throughout the day. I really miss that environment of not having a choice of whether to go to dance or not and getting pushed when I got there. I was strong and in fantastic shape and its because I had teachers yelling at me all day. I couldn't get away with not doing it.

I'm on the right. Look how skinny I was!

When I got to college, I was accepted onto the dance team here, so for a while I was able to be pushed and forced to exercise. But time went on and I kept getting injured and eventually couldn't be on the team anymore and I was just gaining and gaining weight. I'm not sure when I hit my highest weight but it was somewhere around 170. I was horrified. My dad had always told me that the day I stopped dancing I would get fat because I always just ate so much. And the thing is, when my dancing got to a minimum, my eating habits stayed the same as what I was used to doing with a 30 hour dance week. It's a common misconception that dancers don't eat. Wrong. Dancers eat more than any other group I have yet come into contact with. We love eating. It's our second favorite thing outside of dance. And I kept eating. And my dad was right.
I tried to go to the gym off and on throughout college. I would get really motivated and then the second I had to get out of bed early I would fail. Especially with my schedule, giving up even one hour of sleep seemed like too much of a sacrifice. If I decided to go after school I was  always hungry, or I had homework, or I hadn't seen my friends all week and wanted to see them now. Excuses. Logical and fairly legitimate excuses. But excuses nonetheless. And I was able to put it off until tomorrow, and tomorrow I was able to put it off until the next day. And so on. Clearly I wasn't making any progress.
(I will say that I have mostly changed my eating habits, and I'm proud of myself for that. Health is like 80% food and so far I am learning a lot and making huge progress.)
So with my motivation clearly not there, I decided that Lent would be the perfect time for me to start running. Clearly making the commitment to myself was not good enough motivation so I would make it to God. I decided that I would run three times a week. I never decided how much I was allowed to or needed to run, because I figured if I could just get myself out there I would do my best. It makes me sad to say that I have mostly followed through. So far I have gone twice a week. Or all the times that I have gone running though, only three times has been without a partner.

My Work-out Buddy

G lives in my house with me. His wife T and I were hallmates our freshman year of college while G was overseas serving our military. Now we all live together along with our other friend V. G and I started running together in the mornings. It's great because he is this huge Mexican man who is an army vet and is trained as a medic. He is literally the perfect person to run with, especially in my neighborhood, where young women really shouldn't go running alone unless its in the middle of the day. We got up this morning and I seriously didn't want to. It sounded like a good idea last night but as soon as my alarm went off I was praying that I wouldn't hear him get up so I could just go back to sleep. Well the jerk got up and I am so glad that he did. We went for our run, which is slowly getting faster and longer, and when we got back I was so grateful. This is why I never succeeded before. I needed someone to keep me accountable and make me run when I say I'm going to. He has even brought new ideas into our workout. Usually we do interval training and it is so much more effective that running and you can do more of it. It's a blessing to have someone in my life that will make sure I do this. I have already noticed myself getting stronger. V feels left out because she is a runner too, but she is far more experienced and I haven't told her that it is my goal to be able to run with her and not feel like a giant LOSER.
Anyways, the morale of the story is that if you don't have a work out buddy, you need to get one. The only times I have ever really been truly successful at working out consistently is when I've had a running partner or work out buddy that I meet at the gym. People are lazy, but we don't want to let our friends down.
Just do it :]