Hey!
It’s Abby and I’m so excited to give you a tour of our pantry today!
The pantry was one of the first projects we worked on when we moved into our house.
We made a couple tweaks since we moved in so I wanted to give you the full tour and
to show you how we keep everything nice and neat and organized.
Before we jump into that, I wanted to remind you to make sure you subscribe to our channel
to get lots of organization inspiration.
Tip 1.
Choose shelves that really maximize your storage space.
When we first moved in to our house, this pantry had wire shelves.
I never had wire shelves before so I just started putting everything into the pantry
like I normally would and my containers were falling over, things weren't balancing out
quite right.
I just didn’t love them.
They can work in some spaces but they’re just not my favorite.
So, one of the first things we did was pull out the wire shelves and we replaced them
with these more solid shelves.
It’s actually the ALGOT System from IKEA.
I really love these shelves.
We’ve used them in a ton of our closets.
They’re really sturdy and hold up really well.
While we had the shelves out, we also put in some pretty, removable wallpaper in the
back of the pantry just so when you open the doors it’s kind of a nice pop of pattern
and it’s a nice surprise when you open the pantry and it makes it look really pretty.
Tip 2.
Corral like items in bins or baskets.
So, a pantry tends to hold a bunch of different types of items.
I needed to find a way to separate them but still have easy access to everything.
So, I just decided to use these simple bins.
They’re from Target.
They carry them just about every season in different colors so you should be able to
find some that match your house.
Then I just used them to corral our different types of items that we keep in here.
So, the boys school snacks are over here, I have them separated into sweet and salty
just because there were a lot of them I thought that would be a fun way to separate them.
I have a miscellaneous drawer that’s kind of a catch all.
Then, we have different kinds of seasonings like our big salt containers and our different
kind of rubs for steak and things like that.
Up here we have a baking bin so anytime I’m baking cookies or anything with the boys I
can just pull this out and it has everything I need.
Then, the most common question I get asked when I show pictures of my pantry is where
are your cans?
The truth is we don’t use a lot of cans when it comes to cooking but we have a few
and we keep them up here in this bin along with a few boxes of items that we have.
Tip 3 Don’t forget the label!
Everything kind of has it’s own container and they’re all labeled.
Again, these are just gift tags from Target that I took and I used my Silhouette machine
to create little labels for everything so we can tell what goes where.
You could also use a label maker, You could hand write them.
You could create them in Microsoft Word on the computer.
I actually have a tutorial for that on my channel.
So, all sorts of different ways you can label and separate items so that everything is easy
to find.
Tip 4.
Eliminate clutter by using uniform containers.
So to give our pantry kind of a more uniform look and get rid of all the random boxes and
containers, I decided to transfer kind of all my baking stuff like sugar and flour and
things like that into these clear containers.
These also are from IKEA and they’re not very expensive at all.
So we use them like I said for flour and sugar and also things like pasta and rice.
Again, I used my Silhouette machine to cut out some adhesive vinyl and create matching
labels for all of them so I know what’s in everything.
Now, kind of the downside of taking all this stuff out of their boxes is I lose things
like expiration dates or the number of minutes that I need to cook the pasta or something
like that.
So, to solve that problem, I did a couple things.
First, for something like rice or pasta, I cut out the little direction sheet and I put
it right in there with them so I always know how long to cook everything or whatever.
It’s right here in there.
I also keep a list in the back of the pantry of when everything expires and I do this,
I have a little printable, I’ll put it on my blog and I’ll link to that below so you
can grab that printable if you would like it as well.
I print it out and I use my laminator to laminate it and then I use a dry erase marker to write
down each item and the expiration date so I always have a list of when everything expires.
If i replace something then it’s really easy to scratch out the old expiration date
and put the new one on there.
Tip 5.
Use risers to save space and provide easy access.
Since I had these larger clear containers, I thought it would also look nice if I had
could have my spices in clear containers as well.
I found these spice jars at World Market.
Again, super inexpensive.
I used the Silhouette again to put a vinyl label on them.
You could use a label maker just as easily.
And so all of my spices are right here on this riser in matching little containers.
It’s really easy to find them.
If you have more spices that I do, you can also use two.
In our last house, I actually used these risers for our cans as well.
So if you use canned goods a lot and you want to have them more accessible, you can use
the risers for that.
It’s just really nice cause you can fit in a lot of things and see what everything
is and it doesn’t take up a lot of space.
Organization hack! Use a wine rack to store water bottles.
This is our method for storing our water bottles.
I was having a really hard time because our water bottles were in one of the cabinets.
I felt like they were always falling over.
The boys couldn’t reach them when they needed one.
So I saw this idea and I thought it was brilliant.
These are actually like wine holders and they do a great job at separating each individual
water bottle.
I don’t have the problem with them falling over.
If you were in a smaller kitchen and were tight on space, this might not be the best
method because it’s not the smallest way to store them.
It does take up a little bit of space, but we have loved it for our kitchen.
The boys can reach them easily and you can just slide them into the little slots and
they stay nice and organized and nothing is falling over or losing its lid or anything
like that.
So, obviously, pantries come in all different shapes and sizes.
What worked perfectly in my pantry might not work for your pantry at all.
But the same basic principles will apply.
Tip 1 Choose shelves that really maximize your storage space.
Tip 2 Corral like items in bins or baskets.
Tip 3 Don’t forget the label!
Tip 4 Eliminate clutter by using uniform containers.
Tip 5 Use risers to save space and provide easy access.
Remember, the quickest way to get organized is to start today!
So, leave me a comment and let me know what you are going to organize next.
Also, let me know your best pantry organization tips.
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