Organized Pantry

There are very few things I love more in life than organization. Organization makes me feel calm, peaceful and happy. Unfortunately I did not grow up in an organized house, nor did I live in one until about 1.5 years ago. I never learned how to organize and I never kept up with the organization that I tried. Not being organized and having messy habits was one of the major sources of stress for me, so in my path to rid stress from my life I learned how to organize and set up a cleaning schedule.  Even now that I’ve learned to organize, I struggle from time to time keeping this organization and to stay neat. The pictures I post of rooms in my house do not always look as clean and put together as they do when I take pictures. But those pictures are what I strive for and I’d say 75% of the time, that’s the way they do look.

The one exception to this rule is my pantry. My pantry is always organized and the only difference in what it looks like from week to week is what foods I buy. It does get a little messy from time to time, but I just reorganize and it’s back to new. Having an organized pantry is an absolute necessity for me. If you don’t know what foods you have available to eat and cook with, you will waste a lot of money. Also you will probably not cook at home as much. Cooking is one of my favorite things to do, not to mention it’s very cost effective and it’s very healthy. I knew moving into this house that I would have to maintain an organized pantry to make sure we are saving the most money we can and eating the healthiest that we can!

I realize that not everyone has the space and means to have as organized a pantry as mine – because I definitely didn’t have the space that I have until now. Our pantry has enough room for all the food in our house, so we have no food in our cabinets at all. So in the pictures I’m about to show you – this is all the food in the house, save what’s in our refrigerator.

Our pantry started out pretty plain and boring. All the shelves you see are the shelves that were there. There was so much unutilized space in this closet.

So the first matter of business was to build more shelving. I know you can’t really tell from this picture, but this pantry is about 3 feet deep.  This means we had a little over 2 feet to place extra shelving along the sides of the pantry before they ran into these shelves on the back of the pantry (If you have no idea what I’m saying, the pictures below should clarify). We decided to just place shelving on the right side of this picture, because there is also an extra foot of depth on this side, right behind the door.

So Matt built shelves, from scratch. We went to home depot and bought 3/4” white wood boards that looked like a huge sheet of plywood. From that he cut them down into shelves and cut supports for the shelves for underneath. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the process of this and I apologize for my lack of planning back in May. These new shelves looked just like plywood so they had to be painted and we painted the existing shelves as well (which was the same yellowish-white that I’ve shown you before with pictures of the trim.) We painted these shelves to match the trim and the door of the pantry, using the same white paint we used everywhere else in the house for doors and trim.

Next, we need to organize. I went to the container store and bought wall hanging spice racks, a can rack, baskets with handles, a flip-out bin, and erasable food labels. I also went to wal-mart and TJ Maxx to buy some plastic canisters that lock. In the plastic locking canisters contained my bulk items like pasta, oats, rice, flour, sugar, nutritional yeast, etc.  After a few hours of sorting and unpacking we had a full organized and stocked pantry.

The modular bins I used for my teas. Down below the shelves we had drinks, dog food in those huge bins, trash bags, etc. I was extremely pleased with the set-up of the pantry save for one thing.

This corner right here was a mess and I couldn’t stand it. This was the accumulation of bulk bin shopping from May-August that I had not accounted for in my original pantry planning.

And also over this time, my organization upkeep was lacking. The pantry had started to look cluttered and it was driving me insane!

One of the tasks of my 2 week vacation in August was to organize this space and re-organize the pantry in general. I had so many bulk items that I decided to follow suite and buy mason jars for the bulk items. Emily has had her bulk items in mason jars for a long time – but this is the most recent kitchen reveal so make sure to check hers out.

I purchased regular pint mason jars and wide-mouth quart jars. I also pulled the erasable food labels I had purchased at container store.

First, I pulled all the bulk items I had out on to my counter so I could survey exactly how many jars I would need.

Just to give you an idea of things I put in these jars here are some of the things you see on the counter: Flaxseeds, chia seeds, raisins, dehydrated refried bean mix, millet, barley, bulgur, quinoa, pancake mix, lentils, dried chilies, shredded coconut, baking soda, etc.

After washing and drying all the jars and lids, I started labeling and pouring the items into the jars. Then I spent some time re-organizing the space in the pantry so I could make room for everything.

I’m very happy to report that it’s been about six weeks since I took on this project and our pantry looks just as organized. Having a much smaller stash of bulk bin bags keeps that corner nice and neat. I also have added a few other jars since then, so some of the smaller jars are stacked on top of each other. Overall, I love my pantry and it’s probably one of my favorite parts about our house. I love to see the expression on people’s faces when I open the door and they see all the jars and how all the jars are labeled. I guess if I ever die at least people will know what is in my bulk jars!

What do you guys think? Have any suggestions for me or tips for how you keep your pantry organized? I’d love to hear your thoughts!