Pantry Post

Here is what our pantry looked like when we moved into our home early last summer:

Imagination time: I don't actually have a picture of this.  Please picture a 4 foot by 6 foot 'room' that is completely empty and has quarter sized holes in the walls where closet shelving supports used to be. 

The pantry was missing something fairly important.  All of the closets in our house were missing the same thing, actually: closet shelves.  (This post explains a bit more about our 'special' home:).)  The custom made California Closets that were in our house at one point were no longer in place when we moved in.  Remember when I posted here about how our foreclosed home has lots of great built in storage?  Well, it didn't have great storage in the pantry and closets to start.

We made do with a metal shelf and cardboard boxes like this for awhile:

And then after patching and painting the holes in the walls, and installing 2 electrical outlets, we contracted a local closet company to install this last summer:

Blurry pictures, but it's all I have of the brand new shelving.  We designed the shelving to have the most storage possible for the space, while at the same time providing counter top space for the small appliances we'd prefer not to keep on our kitchen counters.  We chose a laminate counter top that very closely mimics our granite in the kitchen.  (The edging is different than our granite, however, and if I had to do it all over again I would have matched the ogee edging that's in our kitchen.)

After 8 months, our new pantry ended up looking like this on most days:

So I spent less than $30 total on these supplies and 2 more glass jars like these:

• Chalkboards from Michael's, full price $2.29, but I used a 25% off entire purchase coupon so it was closer to $1.75 each x 4 = $7
• White Plastic Bins from Walmart Clearance: $1.50 each x 3 = $4.50
• Roll of Chalkboard Adhesive Paper: $3 with coupon from Michael's (used in this post too)
• Glass Jars from Walmart: $6.97 each x 2 = $13.94

I made basket labels using the chalkboards and twine (just like I did for Lucky's closet), and I made more jar labels using the adhesive chalkboard paper.

And now our pantry looks like this:

Metal plant holders (IKEA) and woven coffee basket (Home Goods) were owned already and were pulled from other rooms in the house.

We are all loving the new look and we're doing much, much better to keep things organized!  And now, I have more room to stockpile sale grocery goods!