My pantry scares me. It’s even worse than my bedroom closet which I re-organized a while back. (You can read about that here.) My pantry though, it’s a horrible, evil little cavern in the corner of our kitchen…the kitchen of a manufactured home and an older one at that so as you can imagine, it’s not space that’s truly optimized as best it could be. When I opened the door the other day to try and find something to make with dinner I basically decided then that I needed to do something. I didn’t have a foggy clue what we had in there and what we didn’t, which is probably why half the time when I go to make dinner I can’t finish it because one thing I thought I had isn’t actually there. (Yes, we use macaroni noodles for spaghetti on a regular basis because if all else fails, there’s always a box of Kraft hanging around!)
Here’s what I happened to be looking at the moment I decided something had to give. I seriously think I may have subconsciously been making food choices based on things that didn’t require me to actually open the pantry door.
After I gave a little thought to what I wanted to do with my sad, dark, cluttered pantry, I picked up a few dry storage containers for things like cereal, flour, sugar, and smaller items and used the cardboard boxes that most foods already come in for other things.
By using what was already there, and spending less than $40 on just a few containers that I can re-use, I was able to turn the hot mess you saw in the beginning into this:
Now it took me a couple hours to pull everything out and sort through it, but this is so much more organized and pleasing to look at right?
What’s your food or kitchen storage nemesis? Do you have the perfect kitchen or do you have a sore spot that needs help? Let me know in the comments below and thanks for reading!
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I wish I had a pantry to make over LOL. You did a good job on yours!!
thanks Robin! It’s really more like a closet lol but I like to call it a pantry…it sounds fancy 🙂
My broom/coat closet is our pantry, too, Alison! ha! 😀
Your before picture looks very similar to what out pantry looked like a few months ago LOL! You did a great job reorganizing it!
I love how you chose all those containers to organize! What a nifty and creative way to save space and tidy up the pantry!
My pantry closet definitely resembles the way yours used to look! About the only thing I know for sure is in there is cat food and how much! That is such a good idea one that I am going to attempt very soon!
I love the dry storage containers. Your pantry looks so much better. 🙂
I love how you organized everything! My pantry looks like such a mess right now.
i need to do this in my pantry so bad fantastic ideas.
Pans share space with our food in our pantry. I’d love to have an island or something to house the pans separately. Your pantry looks great!
My problem is that I don’t have any space to create a pantry or anything! I do keep my cereal in dry storage containers like that, but they’re on top of the fridge.
I love this! So clean and easy to find things!
I like the easy pour containers. I’ve been looking into getting some for our pantry for the cereal and pasta.