Pantry Shelves

The problem with canning my own produce is that I wind up with a lot of it. I want that strawberry jam to last a year, so I put up several half-pint jars. And then there's chutneys, apple butter, apple pear butter, pickle relish, and mint jelly. And also many quarts of applesauce, peaches and pears. By September and October, by pantry is getting nice and full. The shelves are all loaded with summer's bounty.

Yesterday, while in the kitchen, I heard a strange popping sound. Just one loud "pop" followed by another several hours later. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. At one point I looked at our wall-mounted pantry shelves, and although they didn't look quite right, I couldn't see anything really wrong with them. I did think "I really need to re-adjust the shelves and get nicer brackets." I guess the pantry agreed with me.

While I was picking up Thing 1 from soccer last evening, the whole set of shelves ripped itself from the wall anchors and crashed to the floor.

Amazingly, only one jar of mint jelly broke. But you can imagine the state of my kitchen right now, as I have all the stuff from over 50 square feet of shelving strewn about the kitchen and dining room. I guess I really did need to clean it out. I just wasn't planning on doing it RIGHT NOW.