Welcome to the 30 Days to Less of a Hot Mess Challenge! We're decluttering, reorganizing and getting some fresh air to make a home we love. If this is your first time joining, you may want to start here at the beginning. Affiliate links used for your convenience.
**************************************************************
Can we be real for a second? I absolutely love having a newly organized and cleaned fridge from yesterday's post. Sure, it's nice to fit all my drinks in the door now instead of having them scattered across the fridge shelves. But truth be told? It didn't knock my socks off. I won't lose things as much, but honestly I didn't lose a ton of things in the fridge in the first place.
But today's topic? I'm downright over-the-moon thrilled with the changes I've made to my pantry.
Technically I'm not sure you can call my food storage area a pantry. It's more like two cabinets, one in my kitchen and one in my laundry room, that hold almost all of my food storage. It's teeny tiny compared to some I've seen. But it's what I have, and honestly my system for food wasn't working for me.
I have one cabinet that holds most of my non-perishable items in the kitchen. Well, except for spices, oils, cereal and chips. Those live in other cabinets, and those are organized and fine. It was this food cabinet that gave me fits on a regular basis.
When we moved into the house, we ripped out the wire shelves in the laundry room (yet to be revealed on this blog four years later, oops!) and added some standard cabinets from Lowe's. I designated the very first cabinet as my "extra food storage" cabinet.
So anything that wasn't opened and didn't fit into my one kitchen cabinet went in there.
The problem was that it was hard to keep track of what I had and what I didn't. I never once thought about putting all the same things together in one cabinet. I felt like all the opened boxes and bags should be in the kitchen and the rest should go in the laundry room.
Big mistake!
This is how I ended up with 6 boxes of granola bars, I'm sure of it. And 2 nearly full bags of turbinado sugar and 3 cans of Pam cooking spray. It's just hard to keep track of two jumbled cabinets.
So, what did I do?
I emptied them both out, of course!
Then I grouped similar items together. Some of the categories I chose were:
- kids snacks
- dried fruits
- baking goods
- crackers
- rice and pasta
- canned tomato products
- canned everything else
- drinks
I bought a bunch of the clear pantry bins from Target the other day. I thought I'd have extras and would be returning some, but I used them all and still need more. Eek! I ordered some from The Container Store that will arrive later this week.
Then I put everything back in an organized way. I'm thrilled with how mine turned out!
Now I can see what I have at a glance. No more rummaging through both cabinets to see if I have spaghetti noodles or cans of diced tomatoes. I can just look in their designated spots.
Sorry the pic is so pink! I can't figure out why for the life of me!
RELATED: How To Create Your Own Pantry Labels
I can't tell you how many times I thought I had something in my cabinet for a meal and couldn't find it, only to find it the next day or the next week. Ugh! So frustrating! But not anymore!!
I also think it will help me see when I have a lot of one thing. If I have a ton of pasta, then maybe I need to make an extra pasta dish or two to use up my plentiful supply.
Also, I'm going to be making labels for the bins very soon, and I'll be sure to add a picture here when they're done.
The Messy Work: Clean out your pantry, throw away anything expired, donate anything you won't use and put everything back in an organized way.
In the mess with you, Laura
Ready to find peace in your home again?
You can't decorate a home with clutter. Get started on your decluttering journey with 30 days of encouraging and helpful emails to keep you motivated!
More Posts You Will Love:
