An Organized Pantry

An Organized Pantry

Over the weekend, I decided to finally tackle our pantry organization. I wish I would’ve thought to take a picture before, but basically just imagine a giant mess and that’s what it looked like. It was one of those “oh, I didn’t know we had this!” situations when I started cleaning it out, with things lurking in the back that we’d totally forgotten about. Now, we can see pretty much everything we have right away and know immediately what we’re out of and what’s in stock.

One of our friends recently gave us a HUGE box of antique mason jars with lids, in all different sizes. Amazing! What you see here is only about half the collection! I started my pantry organization by emptying a lot of boxes and bags of random things like rice, tea, noodles and marshmallows into the jars (after putting them through the dishwasher!), and then threw away the original packaging. (And did you notice how many marshmallows we have??!!)

Some bulkier boxes that don’t fit into mason jars, like graham crackers and spaghetti noodles, along with canned goods, I organized into one row, so there’s nothing hiding in the back that I can’t see. I’d love to one day get some canisters that fit spaghetti noodles, but for now I just left those in their original boxes.

Smaller items like packages of instant oatmeal and taco seasoning packets, I put in a metal wire basket from Target. I love this basket, which was a whopping $3 in the dollar spot. I wish I would’ve bought more before they sold out. I also threw some fruit in an old metal basket I had…. mostly because these tiny little lemons from Trader Joe’s are adorable!

On the right side, I used the top shelves to hold a lot of random things that I don’t need to reach often, like extra vases and the fondue pot that we always want to use and never do. Lower down, we have a row of paper towels for easy reach, all our baking pans, and then the bottom shelf holds all our cookbooks.

I’m SO happy with our newly organized pantry. Um, maybe now we’ll get around to actually finishing some other projects in the rest of the pantry/laundry room!

— Kerry