How I Maximized My Pantry

The pantry alone gives us a ton of space compared to a lot of kitchens. But we sure manage to fill it up pretty quickly... I finally got to make a great addition and organize the pantry to much fuller potential.

I of course forgot to take a before picture... but here is an older version of what our pantry looked like:

Prior to our new organization it was arranged to be more logical than this picture, with the cereal on the second from the top shelf, then baking stuff and baggies, then the wire shelves you can see on the second and third shelves in the picture were on the third shelf with all the cans, then the other more random boxes on the bottom shelf.

It just ended up not being enough space because we always have so many boxes of cereal. We also ended up getting some larger cans of soup that didn't fit on the "double" shelf with the cans. So even though it was more organized, it still looked a lot like the picture above.

When Dylan and I came home from the store last weekend he made a comment about not having any space and I responded "Well if we have the door shelf thing I wanted we would have a lot more space." His response, "Well I know you have been talking about it for about 6 months, so go ahead and get it."

I was totally shocked. I usually either have to find a free way to get my organizing done or talk about it for a really long time and consistently. I didn't realize I had mentioned my longing for the door shelf outloud, so maybe Dylan just really wanted it too.

Well here it is!

 Ooooo.... Ahhhh...

We are probably still in progress on how to organize the door best, but I think we have a pretty good system with the drinks stuff on top, spreads in the middle, then cans and then odd balls and extras on the bottom.

 With a whole shelf clear that meant we needed to arrange the inside of the pantry.

The top pretty much stayed the same with the bottles of oils and syrups on the right and the candy on
the left.

As you can see we have a full shelf of cereals. There is space to double up on cereals too if we need. The shelf below holds our pastas and crackers (can you tell I am a carb fiend?) Yes there are also 10 boxes of Kraft mac and cheese, they had a 15 pack at Costco a bit ago and we eat it usually once a week.

Below that we moved the baking stuff one shelf down. I also used one of the wire shelves to give us a better way to store and use the baggies and tin foil, and then have some more space to put other things like our bread and the tea box that is too large to fit on the door. 

Below that is still the extra odds and ends like popcorn and baking mixes that we don't use as much.

I think one of the things I am most excited about is the amount of space I have on the floor. I put all of the dog treats/bones in one of the containers we had been using for dog food when Ares was still getting puppy food. The other dog stuff has been relocated to the garage (which is in desperate need of organizing, but that won't happen until Spring). There is legitimate space to put something else down here if we need and it doesn't smell like dog treats which is always good.

The other big thing that helped make it look so nice was going through all of the food in the pantry and throwing out the old items that had expired or that we weren't going to be using the rest of.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our newly organized pantry! That means my kitchen is almost completely organized! At least with the plans I have to date. :)