Please don't laugh at my pantry
A virtual tour of the details in our home, complete with the backstory you didn't know you needed
Welcome to our home
“I'm usually not this organized,” I found myself saying for the third or fourth time last month. “This is just the type of thing that happens when you have eight months of free time!” I say with a weak smile, ushering our guests into the next room before they can say how much of a quack they think I am for having a labeling system for the jars in our pantry.
The system is not complicated–the purple washi tape is for loose-leaf teas and the blue is for nuts and seeds–but I can feel the judgement. Or maybe it's admiration? I wonder. I think for a moment, watching our guests make eye contact with each other. No, it’s definitely judgement I tell myself. I shrug and continue with the tour.
Since moving to SF in September, we have hosted 11 loved ones on 7 separate occasions; a combination of friends and family from various chapters of our lives who have traveled from far and wide to spend time with us.
I love hosting. It means so much to me when people go out of their way to share this corner of our lives with us for a brief time. Sure, it's great meeting at a restaurant or traveling to a new city together, but nothing replaces the intimacy of making someone breakfast (we brought these tortillas back from HEB!), swapping life updates while folding laundry (these pants are from a clothing swap!), or giggling together late into the night on the couch (can you believe she said that!?).
My favorite relationships are built not just on the profound, but on the mundane. I appreciate staying with friends and family when I travel to their cities for the same reasons: I want to know your favorite coffee blend, to hear a story about your coworker, to see you interact with your roommates. In short, I want a glimpse of your world. I assume, when you stay with me, that you want a glimpse of mine.
And yet, there's something almost embarrassing about hosting people at this particular juncture, this near-end of my sabbatical. For almost eight months I have been taking the raw materials of my life with great intention into my hands, inspecting them carefully, dreaming of various ways they might fit together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. For almost five months, my home has been an extension of that. There is no nook without a pillow, no knick-knack without a story. I've had the luxury of focusing as much time and attention as I desire into making every corner somewhere pleasant to look at, cozy to spend time in, or organized in such a way that will make existing marginally easier when, less than two weeks from now, I return to the corporate world and my relationship with time turns back into one of scarcity, as it is for almost everyone I know.
It feels uniquely vulnerable inviting even my nearest and dearest into this world of mine, this physical byproduct of time’s flowing abundance, as if I’m watching them rifle through my underwear drawer and, instead of finding dirty laundry, they discover granny panties with freshly embroidered flowers and hand-sewn hearts. It’s like, oh, this is what you spend your time on? Who does that?
It turns out I do. I mean, not the granny panties thing specifically–I don't even know how to sew. Though if I did, it’s not a stretch of the imagination to assume I would have spent part of this time patching flower-shaped holes in some of my favorite socks. But there have been other superfluous-seeming endeavors.
Can I make you a cup of tea?
Take, for example, the pantry. It’s not just the labeling system that catches people’s eyes, but the watercolor tea menu hanging beside it (why yes, I did paint that myself).
To me, the jars contain more than just food and tea, but also intentions and memories. Last spring I read The Republic of Tea: The Story of the Creation of a Business, as Told Through the Personal Letters of Its Founders by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig. The founders aimed to position tea culture as an antidote to coffee culture, a beverage made for slowing down and paying attention as opposed to speeding up and blazing through. If you've read the first post of Unbound, you know that Slowing Down has been one of the primary aims of my sabbatical. What better way to remind myself of this than to cultivate a loose-leaf tea collection?
I also didn’t start this collection from scratch. Last spring I took a class called Indigenous and Decolonial Feminist Ways of Knowing. Among the many ways this class expanded my worldview, one was by introducing me to the concept of plant allies: the same way each of us may be drawn to certain people or animals throughout our lives, so too may we be drawn to certain plants, flowers, and herbs. Occasionally the professor gave us packets of these plant ancestors (plants that evolved alongside humans for various medicinal and ceremonial uses) to take home, make teas with, and reflect on. This is how I found myself with a nascent loose-leaf collection of lemon balm, skullcap, yarrow, and eleuthero root, as well as a budding herbalism hobby.
Thanks to the local worker-owned cooperative Rainbow Grocery, whose massive bulk section contains an entire aisle of loose-leaf teas, my collection has since grown. Now making tea for myself or a guest, after consulting the accompanying hand-painted menu, is one of the many little rituals I’ve grown to love about this corner of my home.
Though the mental and physical effects of the teas themselves may be imperceptible (except for skullcap, which I have never imbibed without being lulled into a nap shortly thereafter), there is value in-and-of itself in taking a moment to pause and check-in with my body. What do I need right now? Am I feeling bloated? Hazy? Anxious? For me, the tea ritual is about much more than just the sipping–it’s about the noticing.
Are you hungry?
But the tea corner is just one part of the pantry. There are also several large containers of dried goods from Rainbow Grocery or the family-owned corner store a few blocks away. In front of them sits a changing array of produce, occasionally delivered to our doorstep from FEED Cooperative, a CSA of more than 50 North Bay farmers. (Though I am slightly self-conscious about the hyper-organized pantry, I am unabashedly proud that the majority, if not entirety of my grocery spend each month flows to establishments aligned with my values).
Having the food visible in this way serves more than just an aesthetic and practical purpose, but also a nostalgic one. I have, with no subtlety, tried to set up my kitchen to mirror that of Jim and Sharon, the folks with whom I spent a magical month in August.
The first time I cooked dinner for them, I noticed Sharon looking at me sideways as I ran back and forth between the kitchen and the desktop in the den to check a recipe online. Sharon, I soon realized, rarely follows a recipe. She simply knows how to cook, and whatever she doesn’t know, she wings. Her pantry and fridge are so well-stocked that she could whip up just about anything she craves. She’s also savvy as hell about avoiding food waste. Zucchini going bad? Let's make bread. Blueberries getting moldy? Okay, it's zucchini blueberry bread now. Red peppers ready to turn? Throw ‘em in the stir fry. Gluten-free guest coming over for dinner? No problem, almond flour on the second shelf in the cupboard on the left.
With Sharon as a foil, I realized two things. First, how poorly stocked my own kitchen has always been, and second, that I do not actually know how to cook–I merely know how to follow a recipe. For a decade I have been outsourcing my decisions and knowledge to the internet. My routine would be to look up a few recipes to meal-prep for the week, buy exactly those ingredients, and then batch-cook, following the recipes to a tee. I’ve been quicker to trust a stranger on the internet about what flavors go well together than my own curiosity and tongue. Where’s the fun in that?
By the end of my time at Jim and Sharon’s, I was no longer looking up recipes, but instead shopping around the pantry and the fridge to see what piqued my interest. Cooking became joyful, experimental, fun. It became yet another extension of my life’s philosophy to try and make something beautiful out of whatever lies in front of me–a task made easier when you have jars upon jars of ingredients at the ready.
Shall we continue the tour?
If you were in my house right now, I would have ushered you past the kitchen long ago and into the next room where your keen eyes would notice that it is not just the pantry that has been organized thoughtfully, but also the bookshelves. Books I've already read are sorted by color in the living room, books I haven't are sorted by genre in the playroom, and books borrowed from friends rest on my nightstand so I can make them my top reading priority.
Even my digital bookshelf could not escape a transformation. At the end of 2024 I switched from Goodreads (owned by Amazon, disappointing recommendation algorithm, horrible UX) to StoryGraph (independently owned, incredible recommendation algorithm, fascinating reader profile stats).
One of the reasons I switched platforms is because I didn't like what Goodreads was doing to my relationship with reading. One of Goodreads’ most used features is the annual reading challenge. I had set a goal to read 60 books and, in my efforts to reach it, found myself occasionally reading shorter and shallower books than I otherwise would have. I prefer to read with a pen in my hand, taking notes on particularly shocking insights or transcribing delicious turns of phrase as I go. There is no time for this, however, when you are 5 books off track to reach the annual reading goal you set for yourself on a more ambitious day.
StoryGraph, by comparison, has more reader-friendly features. Rather than goal-setting mechanisms that encourage you to consume as much as possible (have I mentioned that Goodreads is owned by Amazon??), StoryGraph lets you set goals for how many minutes you want to spend reading each day or week, or how many pages, or how many different genres you want to explore, or how many books by authors from various geographies. Success, then, is defined not just by a number, but by a metric of your choosing. The very design of the app invites you to be intentional about what you’re reading and why. The many 500+ page chonkers on the playroom bookshelf will be delighted to know this may be the year I finally crack their spines.
You’re not gonna believe this…
Finally, I'd be remiss to talk about thoughtful household organization without mentioning the holy grail: my closet. One of the small joys I feel about going back to work soon is the opportunity to resume wearing all the cute business casual apparel I’ve accumulated through the years. And yet, one of the small (okay, massive) dreads I feel is having to wake early enough to become presentable and still get to the office before 9. For context, my sabbatical mornings are as slow as can be–I wake up between 8:30 and 10:30 am, journal in my pajamas (known as “morning pages” for The Artists Way-ers among you), go for walks, and cook myself a large breakfast or lunch. As much as I am dreading the transition back into being an early riser, I am also desperate to find a way of maintaining some leisurely me-time in these morning hours.
To solve for this, last week I did something others may see as truly neurotic; I put on an audiobook and organized my entire closet, not by color or style, but by outfit. I tried on all of my pants, my blouses, my blazers and skirts, and arranged them together in readymade outfits I feel genuinely excited about. I essentially “meal-prepped” my clothes for the next several weeks, saving precious morning time for more important tasks, like hitting snooze on my alarm.
Organizing the closet in this way was a tiny investment that Present Liz (now Past) made lovingly with Future Liz in mind–a version of me I am nearly certain will be stressed, and, at least in the first few weeks, sleepy. The pantry and the bookshelves are no different–they are investments into particular corners of my world that make it easier for me to remember who I am, what I value, and how I want to move through life, particularly on days when I may be too rushed to move with intention at all.
They are my way of fortifying the walls that protect the sanctity of one soon-to-be recurring lifeline of a moment: when, starting in two weeks and for the following two years to come, after turning off my 7'o clock alarm, I slink into the kitchen in my pajamas, put on a pot of tea, and settle down with my morning pages to relish in an unbounded morning before I must slink back to the closet, adorn my readymade corporate costume, and rush out the door to the coffee culture that awaits.
Thank you for coming to visit
So yes, here it is, all my flower-laden laundry. This is what I have done with my time, with my home, with my life. I don't know why I cower under the threat of judgment, why I make up negative stories about what others might think, or why I oscillate between this weird mix of shame and confidence, fear and pride every time I invite someone in to get a glimpse of my extremely personalized abode.
In many ways, it would be easier to give you a tour of a home washed in millennial grey, to point out fake plants and mass-produced décor that you may recognize, because we’re all getting the same targeted ads. “See, I’m just like you!” I would say as I point to my hypothetical chunky-knit throw and matching knot pillow. “We are the same! We are ALL the same!”
But, my loves, we are not. We like different art. We own different books. We cook with different spices. My playroom is for crafts, for board games, for writing. Yours may be for music, for sewing, for gear (or it may currently be your “office,” which, if you’re anything like my boyfriend, you would at least call your “dojo”).
You may not actually know what you like yet, you may need some experimenting to find out (Lord knows I’ve had more than enough time to discover). But in the meantime, let me come over. Pour me some wine in the glasses you got from the antique store down the street. Hang the family photo where you’re all in a coordinated color scheme. Display the weird vase your estranged brother gave you. All of it is part of your story. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.
We don’t have to be the same to love or accept each other. But my god, we do have to be ourselves. My home is truly an extension of myself and when I am in it, I have nowhere to hide. Even my toilet paper is a reminder of who I am and what I love (whimsy, patterns, cheeky messages, sustainability, my boyfriend’s smelly farts, etc.).
If the way I’ve organized my home does not scare you, I do hope you come over. But when you do, please don’t laugh at my pantry.
Just kidding, we can laugh at it together. It is a little silly, isn’t it? I think all of this is.
I’ll keep the kettle warm.
Unbound is a publication by Elizabeth Schasel, born during the liminal eight months between finishing grad school and returning to a corporate job. The goal of Unbound is to live small and slow—read as many books as possible, go on long walks, be silly with friends, and try to figure out how to be in the world in a way that aligns with my values. I invite you to visit the full list of entries below.
I adore this.
Obsessed is an understatement - I would read your grocery lists.