Organizational Overhaul--Kitchen Pantry

It's been FOREVER since I showed off one of my organizational projects! Today I'm going to share pictures of my pantry and tell a little bit about the work I did in it. (Note: I have plans to re-work this space one day in order to get more out of it, but for now, this has to do. A zero dollar budget is very limiting! 😜) When I worked as an organizer, pantries were my FAVORITE. My sweet boss Liz knew my love for them and would always give me the pantry when we were working in kitchens. 😊

Here's the before:

(I'd actually already done a bit of rearranging on the top shelf and floor before I remembered to take a picture. It looked even worse!)

 And after! 

Much neater and easier to see what we have! I don't know about you, but once my pantry starts to get messy, I get overwhelmed and just start throwing stuff in without any care. It had been probably 2 months since I'd done any cleaning up in here, and it needed it badly! 

I have my pantry kind of divided into sections; I have all crackers/snack/chips/pretzels on the bottom, along with pasta and rice. The second shelf has breakfast items on the left and what I consider "cooking foods" on the right (canned food, oil, broth, sauces, etc.). The third shelf has sweets and breads on the left, and then baking ingredients on the right. The top shelf is where I store extra paper products, as well as our lunchboxes and my mixer, and then on the floor is mostly dedicated to Amazing Bakes (big bags of flour and sugar and drawers of cookie cutters). We also have a trash can in here where we collect recycling throughout the week. This setup works well for us, but honestly it changes a little from week to week, depending on what we buy at the grocery store. Like right now there's a whole section for Girl Scout cookies, but when they're gone, we won't be re-stocking those for another year. 😢 

Here are some tips on cleaning out your pantry and getting it organized: 

1) Purge any food that you don't want, don't like, or that has expired. Bought a new cereal and didn't like it? Throw it away! Cutting back on sugar, but the Valentine's candy is calling your name? Throw it away! Huge container of brewer's yeast that you bought for lactation cookies, but it's been almost a year since you last nursed your baby?? THROW IT AWAY! (Oh, is that just me?) You get the picture! 😊

2) Use baskets or bins to group like foods and keep them contained. These don't have to cost a ton, but it is the most important step when it comes to organizing your pantry. THESE are what I prefer (they're 25% off at The Container Store right now!), but I have also picked them up at HomeGoods or At Home. They come in 2 different sizes, and I love that they're clear so you can see exactly what's in them. They work really well for small packaged items (granola bars, fruit snacks, individual packages of crackers), but I also use one to hold baking ingredients (baking powder, bottles of extracts, chocolate chips), and one for oils and vinegars. I bought the green baskets almost 6 years ago at Target, and although I would like something new, these work for now, especially for larger items like bags of chips.

3) Use stair-step shelves like THESE for canned goods. They make a tremendous difference if you have a lot of cans in your pantry, and make everything so much more visible!

4) Label baskets and bins. Now to be honest, my pantry is not labeled well at all, but there are few things I love more than a labeled bin! There are very few things that we will ALWAYS have in our pantry, so I tend to shy away from making labels. For instance, I'm not going to label a bin "Poptarts" when I normally buy Kind bars, just because I bought Poptarts for a change. But I would hate to put Poptarts in a bin labeled "Kind Bars". (Does that make sense??? 😂) So I end up not labeling at all. But the truth is that you can make your labels as broad or as specific as you like! You could label a bin "Breakfast Foods" or "On-the-Go Breakfast", and then it could accommodate whatever you happen buy. Your labels should also reflect what your family calls certain items. For example, what one person calls a "GoGo applesauce pouch", someone else might call it a "squeezy pack". Label according to what makes sense to you and your family! 

My future dream is to do an Elfa system from The Container Store in our pantry with new shelves and drawers, but this works for now! I hope someone out there has been inspired to clean out their pantry; I would love to hear about it if you do! Thanks for reading along! XOXO