The pantry, especially if you have a small one like I do, can be an insane mess. I found we were wasting so much food simply because I couldn’t see it, it sad but lets be honest if its not in the immediate eye level it gets forgotten. Its not that I wanted to be wasteful, I actually hate wasting money, I was just busy and when meal times rolled around I needed to find something quickly and easily.
In the first part of the pantry organization I did the kids snack bin, now its time to do the next shelf the dry goods. I searched high and low for what would work in my pantry. I wanted some type of container that would not only protect my dry goods and make it easier to find them, but I also wanted something that would not take up to much room in my pantry. There are so many cute containers out there that I fell in love with, but they didn’t really fit my needs.
That’s when I found the OXO Good Grips Pop Containers. I loved the vacuum seal top to help keep air from my dry goods but even more importantly I loved the stack-able tops. It really helped me to get the most bang for my buck in a tiny space. They come in a wide variety of sizes. I started with the 10 piece set which I bought on amazon, I believe that Bed, Bath and Beyond sells them too, but I do alot of Amazon shopping, with two little ones I don’t have the luxury of running to 10 different stores to find what I want and honestly with the free shipping and no sales tax they are generally cheaper than most stores.
After the first set of ten I did buy a few additional pieces to help round out what I needed to hold all of our dry goods. Then it was time to orginize them and label. I chose chalkboard labels, one because quite frankly I think they are cool and had to play with them, and two I loved that I could put one permanent label that could be cleaned off and re-written on whenever I needed to. For most things I would put the expiration date. For others like my flour, sugar, and pasta I would put the date it was purchased.
I then simply put my larger containers that stored my flour and sugars in the back and the containers we used my frequently like pasta in front. So far I am loving this new arrangement and I was able to fit what used to take up a shelf and a half and was a complete disaster into a clean and orderly shelf. Is it sad that this brings me so much joy? Oh well all that matters is that I am happy and quite frankly my OCD husband is loving this organization kick I have been on lately too!
In the next post I will show you what I did with my liquids and canned goods, until then…
