Spring Cleaning Challenge: An Organized Pantry

Once upon a time, we moved into a new house and had a shiny, new pantry. Bigger than any pantry I’d ever had! I showed you pictures of this organized pantry and many of you commented, “Wow! Where’s all the food?!” It was so neat and clean it looked sparse. Okay, it was sparse.

Almost two years and one Costco membership later, it’s not so sparse.

Or neat.

Or organized.This spring, I’ve decided to challenge myself to do one cleaning and/or organizing project a week. I’d love you to join me in this challenge and clean and organize right along with me!

I figured one project a week was do-able. I can handle one project a week, right? If I can do it, you can, too! Let’s organize and clean our houses until they shine! Are you in?

First up: the pantry. Now I know not every person has a large pantry. Believe me when I say I know how blessed I am to have a walk-in pantry with lots of space. I’ve lived with small pantries, medium pantries, and I’ve lived in a kitchen with no pantry. Whatever space you have, you can make that space organized. So let’s do this!

I had half of my dry goods stored in glass jars, and the rest not, so I made a trip to Wal-Mart to stock up on more glass jars. Yes, Wal-Mart. They have a better selection of glass jars than Target. Typically when I’m on a shopping trip, I don’t want to add to my bill by buying more glass jars, so a trip specifically for glass jars was good. I bought a lot of jars in a variety of sizes, including more Ball mason jars, and some other regular storage jars.

The first thing I did was take everything out of the pantry and clean the shelves. Ummm…I soon realized this project was going to take a bit longer than I expected. (I still love my e-Cloth!)

Determined, I pressed on.

After getting a clean slate, I washed the new jars and transferred the flours, grains, etc that weren’t in jars to them. Everything looks so much neater and is easier to find with everything in jars!

Now it was time to reorganize. I made sure to think about what should be accessible to the kids, what makes sense to go together, and what shelf things should go on that I use the most and the least.  I got rid of some things that didn’t really belong in the pantry, but I was still amazed at how much less crammed everything looked once it was neat and organized.  It looks like we have much less in there, but we really don’t!

After I had everything rearranged and organized the way I wanted it, I took it the next level. Yes, I broke out the label maker. I got this Brother label maker for Christmas, and it’s kind of turned me into a label-obsessed monster. I love it.And now I can definitely tell which jar is millet and which jar is quinoa–they look a lot alike!  It feels so good to have everything neat and organized again.  Here’s a before and after for you:I would love it if you would join me in this Spring Cleaning Challenge.  Who’s in?