Last night, Brett said to me, "We really need to reorganize the pantry." There was lots of whining and gnashing of teeth on my part. I admit. Although I use the pantry all the time, and I was tripping over the vacuum and the halloween candy bowl four times a day, I just flat out didn't want to do it. I knew I needed some inspiration.
So today, while he was at work, I got a wild hair and made a Target run. I came home with woven baskets, a couple of plastic bins, and a wire shelving unit, along with some food storage containers.
I took it from this:
(Confession Time: those pictures were taken after I'd already hauled a few boxes of crap out)
To this:
Is it beautiful? No. But it's so much more functional and provides much more space. The items we rarely use are pushed to the back. A closet under the stairs makes for a lot of unusable space, unfortunately. I got the wire shelving unit at Target for $15, and it adds so much storage! It also requires no tools to put it together, so it would be perfect for a dorm or apartment dweller.
I love the Oxo pop containers (a button on top seals and unseals the container to keep dry goods fresh. If you're worried about losing packaging information, just cut the cooking directions or nutritional information from the original package (or just write it down on a scrap of paper) and tape it to the inside or back of the container. Here's our container of brown rice, since I can never remember the rice:water ratio.
I also organized those pesky living room shelves. I got these medium tone woven baskets to hold our spare decorative items (candles, vase filler) and our video games and extra controllers. It injects some color into those black shelves, and hides some of the more unattractive necessities of a video game addiction.
We also got a letter tray to put on top of the microwave, and hold out pile of mail and junk. No pictures yet, as we were putting our kitchen back together tonight!
