My Pantry

This is my pantry today.  This is the "after" part of my before and after.  Unfortunately, I didn't take any before pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination!  This small pantry was not as functional as it could be because it only had 4 shelves which were spaced rather far apart, so there was a lot of wasted space between shelves.  I left the very top and very bottom shelves, but removed the other 2 and put back in 3.  It was quite a job!  What I thought would easily take me a few hours took more like 5 days!  But it's done and much more functional now.

These are pictures of the "during".  All my food was stacked all over the place.

 

 

It was a mess!

This is when I taped off the electrical panel doors so I could paint them.  They've always been an eye-sore, just gray and ugly.  And they take up almost one whole wall of my very small pantry. 

 

Where these blue jars sit there were NO SHELVES.  They had left it open to allow for the electrical panel to the right so its door could swing open.  I put in narrow shelves just wide enough for canning jars that now hold my bulk spices.  I ordered the zinc lids to make the jars look old.

But the jars themselves I painted.  I coated only the outside (so the inside could be food-friendly) using mod podge mixed with water and food coloring.  I think I went a little too dark on my color, so who knows I may do them again someday.

After coating them I baked them in the oven until the mod podge looked clear.  It was pretty easy to do, and it's now one of my favorite parts of my pantry.

I seem to have a lot of pasta, so I used cute jars to hold them all.  Now everything's easy to find.  I love the large baskets that sit on the floor, they hold all those miscellaneous snacks and packages that don't fit anywhere else.

I like the tall plastic containers on the top shelf, they hold all that extra flour and sugar.  Chalkboard labels make them look a little cuter.  Baskets keep like foods together, like crackers, granola bars, etc. 

Now chips have a basket instead of being all over the place.  The white plastic popcorn buckets get used on a daily basis, we are a popcorn family!

The wooden crate was raw wood, I stained it and added the divider to separate potatoes and onions.  I put casters on the bottom to make it easy to move around.

I tried to use every inch of space.  These letter bins are shallow, so they don't interfere with getting to the shelves, but they hold quite a bit of packets and mixes.

A small sturdy stool makes it easy to get things off the top shelf, or sit on it when I'm pondering what to make for dinner.  By the way, what are you making tonight, I need an idea!

These are the electrical panels now all painted in chalkboard paint.  Now I can use them as magnetic chalkboards to write shopping lists.  The magnetic container holds scissors for cutting open packages and markers for writing the dates on containers.  The magnetic clock just makes it cute!  The small wire baskets came from Wal-Mart and work grea for small packets of things.

It's so tiny in there it's hard to get good photos!

That is the tour of my small but newly organized, much cuter to look at pantry!