Pantry Organizing

Hi there! Have you seen the latest new series on Netflix called The Home Edit? It’s about two gals (and their assistants) that help people— think lots of celebrities— to organize their kitchens and pantries and closets. I binge watched the entire series in ONE day!! I’m obsessed!! The show motivated me to get my pantry organized almost immediately— I literally RAN (ok walked quickly) to my kitchen and started pulling things out of the pantry WHILE I was watching the show!! I love their rainbow philosophy— that everything, like books and art supplies and clothes and candy, should be lined up according to the colors of the rainbow. It’s pretty AND functional! So, you guessed it, today I’m sharing my newly organized pantry!!

First, I have to say that I consider myself a pretty organized person, and I did my pantry a few years back and most of it was in good shape, but I hadn’t maintained it lately, especially the top shelves.

This is a picture of the before of that area.

And this is the entire pantry. I’d love to have a walk-in pantry but we’ve lived in our house for 26 years and I’ve gotten used to our relatively small one. You can see I have pull out wire drawers from Lowe’s that we added years ago, along with some additional shelves, which for the most part work pretty darn well. I’ve also labeled most of the shelves and that helps me keep it in a semblance of order. But it was time to EDIT the food items in there, especially the top drawers.

As I watched TV I threw away two trash bags of expired STUFF!!

Next, it was time to contain everything and label the drawers. I have a trusty label maker that I LOVE. I realized that one entire shelf could be labeled ‘Spreads’, and I promise you, spreads are all that’s going in that bin now— and that means YOU, Nutella!!

It’s so great to have a spot dedicated to our nut butters, and to have them labeled accordingly.

Above is what the pantry looks like now.

But I’m not done yet! Here are the shelves above the pantry, before. They also had gotten a bit out of control. Can you see the containers behind the chaos? After I purged and sorted, I labeled the containers, put everything in them, and voila!

Above is the After of that area. I had the containers already (found a couple in the garage). I got them at Target. (You can see I left the liquor area pretty much as is; I just turned the bottles so the labels faced the front. Some things are sacred!)

Next I tackled the cereal area above the oven. Here’s what it looked like before:

And above is what it looks like now that I transferred the cereal to dedicated containers from The Container Store: (Fyi, the ones I linked are not exactly the same. I got mine at the store in Oxnard, CA)

So much prettier!! I’m so happy with the results of my pantry reorganization efforts! I read lots of organizing books (I know, weird) and one of the elements they all emphasize is the last step: to regularly go through and maintain the space (thank you Julie Morgenstern from “Organizing from the Inside Out”). This step is a weakness of mine— I tend to keep things as they are until the space has lost its function. So I’m happy to have kicked myself in the a*s and gotten the kitchen back in order (thanks for motivating me Clea and Joanna!!) And I LOVE how it’s pretty now too!!

Take a look at The Home Edit on Netflix— it’s SO motivating and fun— Clea and Joanna have a great relationship and they love to banter back and forth which is super entertaining.

They also have a second book they released this week called “The Home Edit: Life”, which of course I had to buy. I’m over half way through the book already!! They talk about color coding your phone apps, and how doing so makes your apps easier to find— haven’t done that yet— we’ll see!

I hope you have a good weekend!! If you enjoyed this blogpost and haven’t done so already, please subscribe to my blog. It’s totally free and I’m trying to increase my readership. Thank you!!

Bye for now!!

Xoxo

Cheri