For the love of.....an organized pantry

Our pantry got a wonderful revamp a few weeks ago. My pantry shelves are on the small side in width and depth, but they are very tall, which led to small items getting stacked and piled up. Things often fell off the shelves and onto the trash can below. The trash can has a lid thankfully, but the recycling bins are another story, so who knows what got taken out with the recycling! I got sick of rifling through a bunch of stuff to find the one thing I was looking for, and finding an item right after I purchased more of it at the store because I thought we were out. After about an hour of hard work, our pantry turned out to be a fairly organized, happy place. See the what where why how summary below the before & after pics!

Pantry Before

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Pantry After!

What: 4 RATIONELL VARIERA

Where: Ikea

Why: Made of durable metal, good height for items to fit underneath and large items on top, affordable

How: Put them together, emptied the pantry onto the kitchen counter, arranged the Rationell Variera on the existing shelves, and slowly put things back on the shelves

Total Cost: $23.96+tax

Total Time: approx 1 hr

For the small amount of time and money spent (remember we are on a stay at home mom's budget here people!), I think it is a remarkable facelift. If you want to make over your pantry, the best thing to do is group like items together. For you this may mean all cans together, all boxes together, all bags together, all jars together. Or you could group categories together, like all snacks in one location, all baking supplies together, all bagged beans & rice together. I used a combination of both methods, really. As you can see in the after picture, all cans are under the baking supplies, in rows with the closest expiration date at the front. Jars are together, except for peanut butter, which would not fit with the oils & honey, so it hangs out with the baking supplies. Snacks are together on the bottom shelf, but granola bars and crackers are grouped with the other boxes. Storage bags, rarely used items and my surplus stash are up on the top shelf. The bottom line is that it needs to be as functional as it is visually appealing. If you do it right, the two will go hand in hand!

Thanks for reading! I hope you are inspired!

Best,

Amanda