Organizing the Cupboards - The "Pantry"

No More Wasted Space!

I have been slowly organizing my cupboards while repeating the mantra "A place for everything, everything in it's place".  My kids are older now, so teaching them where things go and putting things away should be easier, right?  Right?!  Well I'm tired of the wasted space in my cupboards and wasting time looking for things.  The first room under attack.... The Kitchen!

Today, I'm going to share my newly organized pantry!  Well I say "pantry" but it's really just a large cupboard that I call my pantry. :)

Okay so here's my kitchen to give you an idea of the layout:

The tall set of cupboards to the right of the fridge is my pantry, and it was a disorganized mess!  See...

Left Photo is a close-up of the top - Middle Photo is a close-up of the bottom - and the last photo is the whole thing.

So the first thing I did was completely empty the whole cupboard and put everything on my island counter.  
Then I vacuumed and wash each shelf.  (Organizing cupboards is the perfect time to also clean the cupboards!).
Factors that were important to me were: 

• That all items were easily accessible.
• That things didn't get lost in the back where I forgot about them (and they expired).
• That it was functional...ie: things I used less often could go at the top, things were grouped together in categories etc.
• That it looked pleasing to the eye

My next step was to gather all the spare baskets and containers in the house to see what I had before spending money on buying new containers.

The above photo may be a bit familiar to you, that's because this project lead to me organizing my medicine cabinet (because I wanted the baskets the meds were in for my pantry!).  If you missed that post, you can read it HERE.




I washed and sterilized all the baskets and containers that I wanted to use for food items.  (yes, I used a t-shirt for my drying rack...we were out of towels...this is reality blogging people!) LOL!

Here is my pantry "after"!

THE BOTTOM HALF

THE TOP HALF

FULL VIEW

I didn't want to put money into getting the pull-out shelves right now, so I just made my own...the large basket is super easy to slide in and out making everything easily accessible.

The only additional costs were for the containers for the cereal and the stackable white baskets for the potatoes and onions.

Behind the onions and potatoes I have large items (usually from Costco) that will be used for re-plenishing any containers that empty.

I have the clear container with individual sized snacks (if not pre-packaged then I just make our own little bags of snacks using zip-loc bags.  The kids love this and they know they're allowed 1 per day (any other snacks consist of fruit, veggies and yogurt for the most part).

It feels so good to be organized and to know what I have, it makes menu planning that much easier!

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