How to Organize a Pantry

I feel like a weight has been lifted! I FINALLY got my pantry organized! The first two pictures are the "before" and the last two are the "after." Things were just thrown in there every which way and I could never find what I was looking for. Until recently, I just tried to ignore it. I knew I was wasting money buying things I probably already had, but I wasn't motivated to sort it all out. It finally got to the point where it was driving me crazy over Christmas. We had family in town and every time someone asked if we had sugar or creamer or honey, etc. I would frantically search through the pantry because I knew we had whatever they were looking for... buried... somewhere under the taco seasoning...

Seriously though, it was embarrassing. And it really did stress me out. Besides, there really isn't any point in me couponing if I don't know what I have in my cupboards (or a place to put all the things I'm scoring awesome deals on!) So, today I finally conquered the pantry clutter!

Here is what I did:

1. Searched YouTube for a video under "How to Organize a Pantry"

2. Watched it

3. Did what the organizational guru in the video said to do

First I took everything out of the pantry. Next I had to add in my own step that they didn't mention on the video... vacuum the pantry floor. I had several pieces of dry pasta that had fallen out of a bag all over the pantry floor, along with colored sprinkles from a jar that had opened and everything was snuggled in with some dust bunnies. So, that all had to go. Then I grouped everything I had laid out on my table by the following categories:

Baking ingredients

Canned fruits and vegetables

Dried Pasta, rice & beans

Cereal

Dressings and marinades

Snacks

Juice

Spices (the ones that aren't part of our spice rack)

Bread

My pantry is pretty bare so you might have more categories to sort by.

Then I started putting everything back into the pantry in groups. I ended up going to Walmart and getting two inexpensive fabric bins for snacks. One for family snacks and one for my son's snacks. I also added some wire racks to the back of the pantry doors. I decided to put all of our canned goods on the large rack and our tinfoil, freezer bags and cling wrap on the other. We also had one of those grocery bag holders from our old house that I hadn't hung up yet, so I mounted that to the wall. I also painted the inner part of the raised panel on the door with some black chalkboard paint so that I have a place to make a list of things we are running low on or almost out of.

Overall, I'm SUPER pleased with myself. I feel like this huge area of stress has just been eliminated. I'm already meal planning in my head with things from the pantry that I didn't even know we had!