I’ve been on full on organization mode these past weeks. We have been tackling so many home projects and with the start of 2021 I’ve made it a priority to live a more organized life. My latest weekend project was the pantry and so many of you watched my stories and voted to see how to organize your pantry on a budget. I’m no queen of home organization but personally I think our transformation came out great and the best part was I did it all on a small budget! Let’s get into it!
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And there it is. The awful BEFORE pantry photo. Hard to believe we lived with that for almost 9 years! Literally moved in, never painted it and just threw everything in there. Looks like something out of horror movie LOL! But the sad reality is that many live with pantries like this. All you need is 1 day! YUP I said 1 day! Erik and I teamed up and in just a single day we worked our magic and our butts off and created what you see below.
Such a difference right?! So how did we do it? Well to start we took everything out of the pantry, bought new wood for shelves and painted. You might be able to skip that but our’s was never painted and our wood was buckling so it was time. Next I’ll share my best tips for how to organize your pantry on a budget.
REMOVE, CATEGORIZE AND TOSS
First, while Erik painted I took everything out of the pantry. We got new wood shelves and I lined them.
Next I created sections on my kitchen counters. I put all the baking items in one area, condiments in another area, canned goods, snacks, and so on. Finally, I looked at expiration dates and tossed anything that was expired. I found things in there from 2016. Not even kidding!
CREATE YOUR BASKET CATEGORIES
You can get so creative with how to organize your baskets but to organize your pantry on a budget my biggest tip is just to buy those $1 storage containers and store the lids for later. If you opt for wire or wicker baskets things can get costly pretty quickly. To get started you can always buy the ones I got and at a later point you can replace them little by little with nicer containers. Once replaced, pull out your lids that you stored and re-use the containers for other things.
There are tons of ways to group your baskets but I did ours by condiments, snacks, baking goods, paper goods, hot chocolate, pancakes, salad toppings, ice cream toppings and so on. I got these chalkboard labels and named each basket by category.
DITCH THE BOXES
Not only do they take up a ton of room but they just don’t look cohesive in a pantry nor do they keep your opened food fresh. Toss any open cracker boxes, open bags of chips, sugar, and flour and fill and label using these plastic containers. I got a great deal on a box of 14 containers that you can find here. Love the assortment of sizes. I also had picked up a few individual ones from Target.
UTILIZE YOUR DOOR SPACE
Another tip is to add baskets to your pantry doors. They sell systems that drill right into your doors but our doors are on the narrow side so we bought these ones instead and just did groups of 3 on each door.
HIDE YOUR TUPPERWARE
I remember the day of unmatched tuppperware invading my pantry and cabinets. The only system I found that actually works is to buy stackable plastic drawers like the ones pictured above. I put certain tupperware containers on the bottom and their matching tops on the top drawer. Doesn’t look all fancy smancy but it’s neat and they are out of eye’s view!
COME UP WITH A SYSTEM FOR YOUR CANS
Keeping cans in a basket is a no go. You just can’t really see what you have in them. I found it much easier to line them up and group them by beans, tomatoes, tuna fish, etc. I got this expandable shelf and was able to line them up on the top and bottom and can now see clearly what canned goods we have.
And that’s pretty much how to organize your pantry on a budget. We didn’t overspend and we got it done in a day. It’s been about 4 days and we literally feel like new people living with this super organized pantry! Again, you can swap out the containers I used for nicer ones. You can line your shelves with fancier paper and you can even wallpaper the walls. But do what will work for you. You can always upgrade and get nicer baskets down the road but at least your organizational system will already be in place. AND mostly everything came from Amazon. For my latest Amazon fashion haul see this post.
So who’s tackling their pantry this weekend? Good luck, have fun and enjoy the purge! Just remember to pour yourself a glass of wine when you are done. It’s a major accomplishment once complete! Cheers to organized pantries in 2021!
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PLASTIC STORAGE CONTAINERS | PLASTIC STORAGE CONTAINERS(MULTI PACK) | 14 PACK FOOD CONTAINERS | TARGET FOOD CONTAINERS | CHALKBOARD LABELS | PANTRY DOOR BASKETS | EXPANDABLE SHELF FOR CANS | STACKABLE PLASTIC DRAWERS
Salute!!!! Great Job. I will be working on mine and referring to your system! Thanks for the post!
Great Job! Tackled this with my kitchen makeover last year….. hate to admit what expiration date I found on a few item -2016 is Not bad at all !! lol. Just ordered the chalkboard labels – so cute and functional- thanks!