An Organized Pantry

Sometimes you need to make a mess to clean up!  Rod helped me pull absolutely everything out of our VERY messy pantry.   I can't even reach the things on the top shelf so needed his help to even empty this space out.   I've wanted to tackle this project since the beginning of the year but being on the verge of a sinus infection for three weeks did not make the thought of leaning over and being in a small space that appealing to me.  I'm happy to say that I feel almost 100% now.  Better enough to finally tackle this project!

"Please organize me!" my pantry was begging me!

We moved everything into the playroom/art room across the hall so it was out of the way and we weren't tripping over it all.  I knew there were a few things to get rid of (old meds, expired foods, random stuff that I had no reason to keep in the first place).  Mostly I knew I needed to move the wrapping paper supplies out of the pantry.  We have the playroom/art room with a nice sized closet across the hall.  In fact it is the only closet besides the front hall coat closet in the entire house that isn't it a bedroom.  It has served as nice storage for the playroom for extra games, toys, and art supplies and a few years ago I turned it into all art supplies.    This would be the perfect spot for our wrapping station.  The pantry is small and narrow and Rod can barely fit in it on a good day but having bags and wrapping paper and ribbon spilling out everywhere is certainly not conducive to helping to keep the space clean and organized and functional.

What a mess!

Time to figure what is even in all these boxes!

I also needed to figure out what was actually in there and why it was so messy.   And I needed to paint the back of the door.  I think by the time our kitchen was finally done we were just done with not having a kitchen and moved back in and never looked back.  We did the bare minimum to the pantry and painted the outside of the pantry door but never painted the walls, the shelves or the inside of the door.  We actually decided that we did not need to paint the walls or shelves this time either.   We are really the only ones that see this pantry and it would be an extensive job and take a lot of my time and with my claustrophobic tendencies I'm not sure I'd see the project through to completion.  I'm the painter around here.  Rod will do the tough to reach spots that I can't reach on tippy toes on the top of a step ladder but I do the majority of the painting.   And I just wanted to get everything back in the closet, know what was in there, and have it neater and more functional and usable.

Containers are lifesavers in a space like this.  My biggest motto is "everything in it's place" which is hard to do when you don't have containers and organizers.   I was excited to do this project until I actually walked in the playroom to get started and said out loud "What have I done?!"  I wanted to turn around and walk out and go run errands, exercise, walk my dogs, anything but tackle the mess.   I took a big sigh and knew that once I got started I would feel such a sense of accomplishment.  I love organizing but getting started is hard for everyone, even those of us that enjoy it.   I tend to sit in the middle of a big mess in a room and just start.  I have one bag for trash, one for recycling, one for donating and then I just start sorting by categories and purging as I go.   Food, patio dishes, baking supplies, cleaners etc.  I don't get up and put things away in the middle.  I don't leave.   I make a pile near the doorway with things to put away after I'm done and I just keep on keeping on.  So many people start organizing and go to put something away in another room and then get distracted and don't come back to do the work.  I find if I stay in one place it becomes very manageable to me.   In the end I have a whole bunch of things I'm keeping all grouped together and I have one bag of trash, one bag of recycling, one bag to donate and one bag or pile to put away.   Methodically going through everything at once gets the job done faster too and it makes the whole task feel less overwhelming,  once you actually get started.

I grabbed a few large brown baskets when I was out recently with this project in mind.   I wanted to be able to pull out baskets to see what was in there but otherwise used cardboard boxes or bins and baskets I already had in the pantry or around the house.   Once you have the items you are going to save and keep you need a bin to keep like items together and contained.   Ideally ones that best suit the space so that every area is accessible and usable.

A bin for paper plates & tinfoil trays, behind that is a box with canning supplies
& a plastic silverware tray.  On the floor below is a larger bin with additional paper supplies.  

A large bin that is easy to pull out with extra pantry items.
Storage on the left for boxes of extras and storage in back for
fun kid kitchen items like a cake pop maker, ice-cream ball,
fruit shape cutter, etc.  Before they were on higher
shelves and forgotten about and out of reach.  

Bins that were practically empty in the playroom became storage for items that
were previously in bags and inaccessible and forgotten about in the mess of the pantry.
That lower basket has extra napkins with more behind it.  That small shelf is made by our appliance
garage in our kitchen sticking into this pantry space.  

One bin for cake making supplies and one for chocolate making.
Light cupcake trays at the very top of the closet so they are accessible
but out of the way and easy to get down from the very top because they are light.  

Once the door was painted and dried I hung the racks back up.   Since the pantry is hard to access it is nice to have snacks for the kids lunches readily accessible in the door, along with spoons & straws for lunch boxes, we also keep meds in here since we have a small bathrooms that don't have a lot of storage this keeps medicine out of reach of smaller children that visit but easily accessible for us to what we have.   If you haven't gone through your meds recently I suggest you do.  Some of ours were quite outdated even though I swear we just recently (5 years ago!) went through them!

Extra pantry items.  We tend to keep extras in here.  When
we are getting low on an item we put it on the shopping list and
keep it in here until we are out of the original.  

We also keep larger items like trash bags that take up more room in here.  

I love these simple wire narrow shelves. We
had them on our basement stairs off our kitchen in our
old house for additional pantry storage.   They work so
well for being able to see everything you have.  

This was before I painted the door but felt so good
to see the floor again!  Even have room for a stool tucked in
to reach those higher shelves.  Without all that clutter it
makes me wonder if we have room for one more shelf in the middle?
What do you think Rod?  

Ah to have an organized pantry again.   And to be able to see the floor again!  Sometimes you just need to empty out your closets and put everything in it's place again to feel organized.  I actually only had one small bag to throw away and a larger one of things to recycle.   Things tend to accumulate behind closed doors and before you know it you've shoved so many bags of "I'll deal with that later" that the space becomes inaccessible and really unusable.   It feels good to tackle the clutter.  One closet at a time!  I'm thinking the front hall closet is next....And then maybe our bedroom closet....We tend to go through the girls closets more frequently to see what fits and what they need for the new school year but adults aren't under those same yearly "purge the closets" schedule.  Maybe we should be!