This house could beat up our last house with its hands tied behind its back and one eye closed. It has crown molding in every room, hardwood floors all over, French doors for days, and all the nooks and crannies my old home lovin’ heart could ever want.
But the storage space. Ohhhh the storage space. That’s the only way our last house could deliver a total knockout. (Well, that and the 9 foot ceilings that I still miss.)
Remember our messy house tour the other week? There’s a reason it’s been so messy around here. Our organization is nonexistent still after 6ish months of moving in, and none of our old organization solutions from the last house seemed to work in our new situation. So I realized the other day that needed to be remedied pronto. Exhibit A was in our pantry cabinet:
Just food packages tossed haphazardly in no general order. I hated packing Olivia’s lunches for preschool every morning riffling through this cabinet, and every day I went all Scarlet O’Hara and told myself, “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” (Didn’t think a boxing metaphor and a Gone With the Wind reference could work together in one post? Challenge accepted, friend.)
But at some point I finally reach the meltdown phase. The phase of “I can’t look at this mess for one more minute or I’m going to lose my mind.” That phase. And there’s no stopping my fury after that point of no return.
So now our pantry cabinet looks like this!
Supplies Used: (Some affiliate links are provided for convenience.)
- Large Korken jars
- Small Korken jars
- Byholma baskets
- Vintage label holders
- Vintage label holder hooks
- Fleur de lis hooks
- Leather luggage tag labels
- Twine
- Command picture hanging strips
- Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
- Chalkboard contact paper
- 8×10 photo frame with glass and backing removed
- Measuring cups set
- Measuring spoons set
We really did get spoiled by our last house with the big walk-in pantry and shelves for days. I took it for granted, I really did. Because our pantry situation now consists of this cabinet in the kitchen and then a couple of cabinets for an extra stock pile of paper towels and less used cooking ingredients allllllll the way in the laundry room.
I breathe a sigh of relief every time I open these cabinet doors now.
1. Hanging Organization
I’m far from a food blogger, but Robert and I cook mostly from scratch almost every night since we stick to a Paleo diet as much as we can. It’s lots of measuring, lots of working with fresh produce and non-processed meat, so I guess it’s a good thing that most of what we eat isn’t stored in a pantry anyway.
I’ve seen this idea done before of hanging measuring cups and spoons from a cabinet door for easy reach, so it seemed like the perfect solution to keep me from always pawing through drawers looking for them.
I love baking with Olivia in the colder months of the year, so this little number happened just in time for the Thanksgiving/Christmas goodies.
I just used hot glue to attach these vintage label holders I picked up at Hobby Lobby. If we ever want to take them down, we can scrape them right off, no holes or further damage done.
2. Inventory List
I like having a chalkboard or clipboard near our pantry to write down items as we run out of them, so I can just take a picture of it with my phone before I run off to the grocery store on my next trip.
I just used some chalkboard contact paper, a dry erase chalk marker, and a frame I already had hung up with a couple of Command picture-mounting strips.
3. Packaged Food Storage
I found these baskets at IKEA last week for $8, and I just attached the labels using 75 cent luggage tags and twine.
4. Dry Ingredient Storage & Labels
I found the jars at IKEA too for $5 and $3 each, and I whipped up this label set on Picmonkey. They add gobs of vintage charm!
Whew! I feel so much better now.
If you want a label printable set for yourself, you can click here or click the button below to subscribe and get access to my printable library:
(If you’re already a blog subscriber, the direct download should already be in your email. Or click here and the password is at the bottom of any emails from me.)
For some reason, I’m always much more motivated to keep a spot organized if it’s pretty and has cute details, so I’m hoping that’s what will happen in this cabinet. Now to just encourage the rest of the family to do the same thing. 😉
I’m thinking there will be several other places in our house getting an organizational overhaul. Would you want to see more organization type posts? I sometimes forget about them, but they are definitely the best ones for helping me save my sanity and not become all Scarlet O’Hara-level dramatic.
Do you have any other kitchen-related organizational strategies you use or you’ve heard of to be really helpful? Because we’re 1 cabinet down and I dunno like… 10 to go. If you want a change though, you have to start somewhere, right?
that turned out really pretty 🙂 It seems to be more of a baking cupboard now. Where are your cereals and peanut butter etc., that were in your before cupboard?
Yes! I really wanted to have more baking/cooking stuff in here because it was a total pain to run back and forth from the kitchen to my other cabinet in our laundry room to get any flour, bread crumbs, or whatever else I needed while cooking. So the thought process was to put items in this cabinet that get used the most (frequently used ingredients, snacks, lunch box fixings, breakfast supplies). Now, our laundry room cabinet holds basically just extra stock- unopened cereal boxes, unopened jars of jelly and unopened bags of sugar, flour, etc for whenever we run out in this cabinet. This kitchen cabinet has cereal in the far right bottom basket, but I took them out of the boxes and clip the bags with chip clips. Seems to keep the cereal fresher than boxes so far actually and takes up less room. And any already opened jars of peanut butter are in the basket labeled “protein”.
Thanks for answering! Looking forward to seeing the rest of your kitchen 🙂
Hi Lauren 🙂 Your blog is my favorite to follow! I’ve never commented before, but I wanted to say thank you for sharing all that you do! I saw your question about more organization posts and I personally would LOVE one on a playroom. My Olivia is 3 and my other daughter is a little over one. I’ve had a hard time figuring out how to keep the toys accessible, yet organized and semi-pretty looking 😉
I liked this post. You’ve inspired me to try to change my dark hole of a panty after 30+ years. How about under the kitchen sink? It’s scary down there 🙂
LOVE organization posts and what you did with your space!
I love organizational posts. Gets me motivated and inspired. Great job on the cabinet!
Lauren, you inspired me to work on my pantry. Love how you organized yours and thank you for the printouts. You are amazing!
Yes, yes… organizational posts! Love what you did here and can use all the ideas I can get!!
This looks great! I just have a question though. What to do with the food that doesn’t fit in the jars? If you buy a container of bread crumbs and it doesn’t all fit in the jar, what do you do with the container? This problem has been why I just can’t commit to doing this in my kitchen! Maybe you have a solution?
Maybe start with bigger jars for the things that come in bigger packages? I use a lot of half gallon canning jars…
Wow! This is awesome. I wish I could get myself together to get this organized. Maybe one day. LOL!
I love organizing and storage posts, your pantry is so pretty and everything is so accessible. By the way, when are we going to see the kitchen?
Just love this! So pretty. Thank you for the labels and the inspiration.
Yes on more organizational posts. What about canned goods??
I’d really enjoy seeing more organizational posts. I like the way you did your kitchen pantry. My pantry also consists of one cabinet and I also have to store all my paper goods, boxes of cereal, and any tall items that take up lots of space in my laundry room cabinet.
What to do with all those spices?
I shared a post about our spices recently here 🙂 https://www.blesserhouse.com/2016/06/dollar-store-spice-organization-printable-labels.html
Hey Lauren, Just got back from Charlotte tonite and went to Ikea with my daughter. We usually go every year at this time and stay in Pineville. We have a girls shopping trip. Saw those baskets and jars and my daughter commented how much she liked the baskets. Ikea is a great place if you are looking for organizational items. And through tomorrow they are offering free delivery on $250 or more! My daughter ordered the chaise and its coming tomorrow! Love that store!
Love what you did in your cabinet! Very pretty! You might want to take a look at your 1/2 tsp and 1/4 tsp labels. I think you may have them backwards. The 1/2 tsp is hanging on a 1/4 tsp label and vice versa. That could really make a difference in a recipe your making! 🙂
Haha! Yes, someone else pointed that out to me too. That would create quite a conundrum with baking. 😉 Thanks for looking out!
Yes to more organizing posts!! Love love. Did you use a piece of wood to raise your canisters in the back?
Yay! Good because I NEED to do more organizing in this house. Win/win. Haha! No, the jars in the back are just taller than the ones in the front. I love that they can hold lots of storage for those ingredients. I linked to both sizes of canisters in the post, if you need them.
Do you have the back jars on a riser ?
Nope! They’re just taller and hold more. 🙂 I linked to both sizes, if you need them.
Hi. May I ask where you got your chalkboard dry erase marker?
Absolutely! I found it at Hobby Lobby in their stationery aisle. 🙂
This is a great idea. pretty and practical. Would love to see more organization ideas from you. Thanks for sharing.
Quick Question: what did you put the jars on so they were at different levels? Looks amazing. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Jennifer! The jars in the back are the taller ones and the ones in front are the shorter jars. IKEA carries about 4 different sizes of them. 🙂