Pantry Organization
Pantry Make Over – I am constantly trying to keep my pantry organized and not let items go beyond their expiration date. For this project, I took the time to thoroughly clean the pantry from top to bottom and then painted the walls and shelves. Then it was time to organize and store my pantry items.
Here are some tips:
- Consider wire or metal baskets that you can see through for some smaller items storage like tea or drink packets. The weaved baskets are pretty, but for somethings, it’s nice to have additional visibility.
- Is there anything you can hang on hooks – like aprons, BBQ utensils, skewers, etc…
- Do you have enough light in your pantry? Mine was a bit dark, so we added a motion sensing battery powered light. We soon found out this had it’s pros and cons:
- Pro’s – It added additional light and when your hands were full, it came on automatically
- Con – Even though it was LED, the batteries were dead within a few weeks
- Fix – Consider a wired in version
- For all bulk items(like flour, sugar, nuts, pasta, etc), I added glass jars in various sizes. This helped to beautify the pantry and keep items fresh longer. You may need to label items (example corn starch and flour look alike…), I tried painting a small box in charcoal chalk paint, in order to use chalk to label – this didn’t work. Try using the actual black chalk board paint – big difference.
- Consider a collapsible basket for linen storage (bottom left)
- Probably the addition that made the biggest difference, I added this shelving unit to the kitchen and off loaded more pantry items into jars and baskets. This also helped organize my ever growing cookbook collection.
