I was so excited to move into a home with an actual pantry. In our old home we only had a cabinet and it was so hard to find anything in it because of it’s size and location in our laundry room. Our new pantry is just a closet but it has space galore compared to what we used to have. It’s a nice size but I also discovered that it quickly became a mess. With wire shelving everything would tip over and it was hard to keep track of what food items were in there and what we were running low on since new groceries were just piled wherever there was space on the shelves. It was driving me crazy.
After checking out beautifully organized pantries on Pinterest, I headed to the store in search of wicker baskets. I quickly decided that I needed to find a new solution once I looked at the prices of the baskets I was hoping to buy. All the baskets I found were around $10 and, because I wanted to purchase a number of them, that just wasn’t in my budget.
I decided to try my local dollar store and discovered they had a variety of bins and baskets that would work and each was only $1 so, even if I bought 30 of them, I would still be organizing my pantry for cheap. I was going to get a couple different colors but in the end decided to stick with one solid color.
Before I went to the store I had looked in my pantry to group items in like categories. Some broader categories, like snacks, ended up being split up into more than one bin. I then counted to see how many bins I would need. I added a few extra for things I might not have thought about. For my extra shelf space, I made a note about what I wanted to store there and kept in mind what storage I might need for that.
Here is how I organized my pantry:
The top shelf is most of my holiday partyware (plates, napkins, cups, tablecloths, etc) and special serving dishes that I don’t have in my photo prop cabinet. I have bins for the following: Christmas, Thanksgiving/Fall, Halloween, 4th of July, Easter/Spring, Valentine’s Day, and Birthdays.
The second shelf is mostly for large pots that don’t fit in my cabinets and some of my small appliances. One corner is for paper products and disposable items like straws, plastic silverware and extra ziploc bags.
The top food shelf is mostly for baking supplies. I have mixes for cakes, cookies and muffins here along with frosting and other ingredients needed to make my favorite treats. We keep drink mixes, tea bags and single serve hot cocoa packets on this shelf as well.
The middle shelf holds mostly canned goods like fruits, vegetables and soups. I also have all of my pasta, noodles, and boxed meals on this shelf. I have one bin for extra condiments so if we ever run out I have spare ones in my pantry.
The bottom shelf is for the snacks. This is where I keep the cookies, chips, crackers, pretzels and things like that. I debated putting all of this on the lower shelf since I didn’t want the kids sneaking into it but I like that the kids can help make their lunches or pick out their own item during snack time. (I also have one basket in the fridge that is for their snacks so stay tuned for my fridge organization post coming soon!)
I chose to label my bins with cardstock shapes. I wrote what was in each bin with a sharpie and then stuck each one on with a glue dot. You can label them however you’d like to by using stickers, labels, or laminated paper. I hope to make some stick on labels for mine in the near future.
That’s pretty much it. Hope you all enjoyed my pantry organization post and got some ideas to organize your own food storage area. Leave a comment below if you have any questions or want to leave a link to your organized pantry. I love getting a peak into other people’s homes :)
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