Organizing the Pantry (again)

It seems like just yesterday I was posting about organizing the pantry. HERE is the old post about just such a thing. Actually it was a little over a year ago. I have organized it since but nothing too crazy.

This time I pulled out all the stops shelves. The house was originally designed to have the laundry area where the pantry is. Strange enough, with an open floor plan that means in my dining room. The lovely people who first built my house (not me) changed the idea and had the laundry area moved into the 4th bedroom and the bedroom redesigned into a laundry/huge extra random closet. The old laundry area then became the pantry.

This isn't horrible except the shelves are so far apart you can't seem to utilize the space well. Honestly, it totally stinks!

Three huge shelves just doesn't cut it. Look at all that extra room between shelves! Time for a change!

Step 1: Clutter your entire house kitchen with all the things from your pantry while you demo. Do it during something fun like on a Wednesday night after church and two days before something major (like report cards due at school). :o)

Step 2: Grab your hammer! This is the really fun part, DEMO! Take out all your pent up aggression issues out on the shelves.

Step 3: Stand back and realize you didn't think about patching holes or painting and don't really have time for it. Ooppssyyy!

Step 4: Tell yourself you will paint behind there later but right now this has to be put back before your family strings you up.

Step 5: Begin shelf reassignment. We had some old shelves we had purchased from Lowes to use in that extra closet that we also ripped out (more on that later) and had placed these shelves and the track system in the garage. They were quickly re-purposed.

Step 6: Cut down the 2nd shelf so that you can have one seamless shelf the entire pantry wide.

Step 7: Quickly put everything back and call it a day.

It still isn't 100% perfect because I just can't find a solution for bagged items that are large. What do you do when you snag a great coupon deal and get 6 bags of Chex Mix or Chips?

I was able to put many small items into these great containers I bought at Wal-Mart. They were about $12-$14 each but I saved so much room by unboxing items I purchased from Amazon and placing them into the drawers. Each drawer then got a label from my label maker so my husband kids knew where everything was. I was even able to make room for my extra candles (they are in the left container, bottom two drawers), my plastic silverware and extra napkins (bottom drawer on the right organizer) and all those annoying drink packages and tea bags.

With the extra shelves and the items more compact, I was able to bring my cookbooks into the pantry where they freed up an entire 12 inch cabinet in my kitchen to put dish towels and extra ziploc baggies.

I will be posting more on these cute glass jars tomorrow! So what do you think of the pantry now? Is it horrible that I didn't patch and paint first?