I recently spruced up our pantry- after the Holidays stuff ACCUMULATES, am I right? It needed to be done. You all know I geek out over getting organized. Seriously, my perfect day may just be tinkering inside my house, organizing drawers and such. And although it is so challenging to keep a home tidy with kids, that doesn’t mean I don’t go to great lengths to keep certain areas of our home organized. The pantry is one of those places that can EASILY be torn about by my kids, Dad and heck, even Austin and I. Taking an hour or so to really organize it means that is WAY less likely to happen and when it does, the process of getting it back to tip top shape is pretty seamless since you’ve already done the heavy lifting.
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When I asked on Insta Stories what type of content you wanted more of here, the large majority of you said organizing so ask and you shall receive. I’m going to break down into steps how I accomplished this seemingly daunting task in just a few hours.
1. Measure your space and order your supplies. Here is where you’ll need to do some legwork. I can help you by providing the items I used to organize our space, but you’ll have to estimate how much to buy for your space. Don’t worry if you buy too much– you can always use the baskets or bins elsewhere or return them. I like everything to look uniform (shocker). I ordered 10 baskets in each size and returned what I didn’t use. That may sound crazy but I didn’t want to be a few short when I was in the work zone.
2. Go through everything. I mean EVERYTHING. Throw anything expired out (obviously), vitamins you no longer take, supplements you no longer use, sauce you no longer like, crackers your kids no longer eat, stale cereal…stale anything. Get a big garbage bag and toss it all. Don’t you already feel better?
3. Organize everything into categories- canned food, sauces, butters, pasta noodles, rice, kids snacks, treats, chips, crackers, drinks. Put them into piles together on your island or kitchen table. This way you can visually SEE how much you have in each category and what size bin or basket you’ll need.
Here are the categories in our pantry:
- Pasta and Rices
- Chips/Snacks
- Crackers
- Allergy Safe for Griffin
- NO GRIFFIN- contains allergens
- Entertaining
- Breakfast
- Paper Goods
- Cleaning Supplies
- Treats
4. Put categories into your bins/baskets (these are my absolute fave and we have them all over our home).
5. LABEL, LABEL, LABEL. This is the fun part. Are you having fun yet?
6. Put everything back and style accordingly. Can you add your cookbooks into your space? Do it. How about your recipe box? We put Coco’s arts and crafts in our pantry as well as some large glassware that doesn’t fit into any of our cabinets. Storing stuff in the pantry means it isn’t taking up valuable space in your cabinets. We added a dry erase calendar and 3 bin hanging organizer for our mail and items that need to be tended to. This way, they aren’t in various piles on our counters (which drive me bananas).
7. Pour yourself a glass of wine and enjoy!
If you organize your pantry, please tag photos and tag me or send them my way! I’d love to see your space. Have a great weekend and as always, thank you so much for following along. xo
Also, if you liked this post, you may also enjoy this one on cleaning out your closet!
