Since we moved into our current house two years ago, the pantry situation has been eating at me. The first problem~We don’t have one! I am used to having a floor to ceiling type storage closet in my kitchen, hidden neatly behind a closet door, to store all of our food in. This house has tons of kitchen cupboard space but no formal pantry.
The second problem with that is although there is lots of cupboard space, I love to cook and bake and guess who has enough bakeware, dishes, and gadgets to fill up the entire kitchen without having to reserve space for storing food? This girl! So I reluctantly chose two of the top cupboards to house enough food to feed our small army.
Which brings us to our thrid problem, storage and organization of said food items.
Here is my solution:
Side one holds all of the snacks, and dry box foods such as pasta and cereal, as well as other breakfast foods and hot beverages.
The second side holds all of the items for cooking and baking; sugar, flower, sauces, etc. And you also get a glimse of where I keep some of my Holiday and specialty dishes…
I found all of the turquoise baskets and bins at my go to place for plastic storage containers; The Dollar Tree. I do not like spending a lot of money on anything, really, and organization is no exception. I used the Turquoise shallow baskets to separate different types of food. Examples are 1. Coffee supplies (coffee, filters, etc.) 2. Dried Pasta 3. Snacks such as pretzles, puffs, and banana chips. 4. Baking Items such as powdered sugar, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.
By grouping the items together in baskets like this I always know where to go for a specific item and if I’m baking cookies, for example, I can just pull the whole basket out, use what I need, and then place it back in neatly.
The other turquoise containers I bought were stackable bins. These are open to the front for easy grabbing so I used them for individually packaged snacks. Just like the larger baskets, I grouped together like items. One bin holds apple sauces, another breakfast bars and individual cream of wheat packets, and another pretzle packs and crackers.
With everything grouped together the goal is to keep it all together and make lunch packing and dinner making for efficient.
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