Week 3 Challenge is Pantry and Spice storage. If you would like to read more about the challenges, please visit Home Storage Solutions 101: 52 Weeks to an Organized home.
Our pantry is a walk in space, but its fairly narrow. When we first bought the house, it only had 4 deep wooden shelves in it.
See here...Many items ended up piled on the floor as we ran out of shelf space.
Here is a picture of the can racks with everything shoved on them willy-nilly.
So I emptied the entire pantry, and for a small pantry it held quite a bit of food! I was overwhelmed with how much stuff came out of there. While it was empty, I scrubbed the floor and cleaned all the scuff marks off the walls.
Then I slowly examined all the food from the pantry. Nothing was put back without being, inspected, repacked in a tub where possible, and listed on my pantry log. I bought a few rubbermaid tubs, to hold food, I also utilized all of my Lock&Lock tubs we purchased years ago.
Here is a sleeve to hold my plastic bags. I made this using all scraps I had lying around the house. You can see the post here. I also hung some 3M Command hooks to hold some bags of chips. I also have these hooks on the other side near the door to hold the lunch bags.
Here is the top few shelves. I put all our baking supplies in containers and labeled them. The least used items are on the top shelf. I have a small stool in the pantry to reach theses shelves.
Here are the lower shelves. I took the boxes of crackers and cut off the front labels as well as the nutritional information and included it in tubs, where I could. I also tried to keep as much off the floor as possible.
Here are the can racks all straightened up. I tossed out old items or things that the food pantry wouldn't take.
Here is the 8th shelf: It is over the doorway. I store my baking pans up here. We also have a few hooks on a wood rail, that I hang my brooms and swiffer mops on.
Here is the one thing I really love about our older kitchen. When we moved in, there was a built in Ironing board in the kitchen. Well seeing as I never iron if I can help it, we decided to convert the space into a spice cabinet.
Ta -Da! Truly one of my better ideas! My Hubby made the shelves adjustable so we can change things up if we wanted to.
Here is the after pic. Its not that different. I only tossed a few older items and straightened out what we already had.
Whew! That was alot of work , but very satisfying! I am looking forward to tackling the cold food storage next!
We pulled those out and installed 8 wire shelves, and several wall mounted can racks. The shelves are narrower than the original wooden shelves but we utilize more space this way. Of course, over the years, it become increasingly more disorganized.
See here...Many items ended up piled on the floor as we ran out of shelf space.
Here is a picture of the can racks with everything shoved on them willy-nilly.
So I emptied the entire pantry, and for a small pantry it held quite a bit of food! I was overwhelmed with how much stuff came out of there. While it was empty, I scrubbed the floor and cleaned all the scuff marks off the walls.
Then I slowly examined all the food from the pantry. Nothing was put back without being, inspected, repacked in a tub where possible, and listed on my pantry log. I bought a few rubbermaid tubs, to hold food, I also utilized all of my Lock&Lock tubs we purchased years ago.
Here is a sleeve to hold my plastic bags. I made this using all scraps I had lying around the house. You can see the post here. I also hung some 3M Command hooks to hold some bags of chips. I also have these hooks on the other side near the door to hold the lunch bags.
Here is the top few shelves. I put all our baking supplies in containers and labeled them. The least used items are on the top shelf. I have a small stool in the pantry to reach theses shelves.
Here are the lower shelves. I took the boxes of crackers and cut off the front labels as well as the nutritional information and included it in tubs, where I could. I also tried to keep as much off the floor as possible.
Here are the can racks all straightened up. I tossed out old items or things that the food pantry wouldn't take.
Here is the 8th shelf: It is over the doorway. I store my baking pans up here. We also have a few hooks on a wood rail, that I hang my brooms and swiffer mops on.
Here is the one thing I really love about our older kitchen. When we moved in, there was a built in Ironing board in the kitchen. Well seeing as I never iron if I can help it, we decided to convert the space into a spice cabinet.
Ta -Da! Truly one of my better ideas! My Hubby made the shelves adjustable so we can change things up if we wanted to.
Here is the after pic. Its not that different. I only tossed a few older items and straightened out what we already had.
Whew! That was alot of work , but very satisfying! I am looking forward to tackling the cold food storage next! I really think keeping things so organized as well as charted on the pantry log is going to help me plan meals better, as well as keep me from wasting money buying duplicate items.
Thanks for visiting today!
Jan
Looking good, you have done a lot of work. Is my house next? Well since I don't cook very much my pantry is small. Keep up the great work!
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