Pantry Makeover .. DONE!

So, if you remember a few weeks back to my pantry moth meltdown I explained how we were in the process of completely redoing our pantry and it would be done by weeks end.

Well, I'm not really sure what world I was living in, because "weeks end" just happened to be two and a half weeks later! Life gets busy sometimes, so please excuse my lack of timing.

But, the pantry is finally complete and I couldn't be any happier with how it turned out! The entire project was fairly inexpensive (Seriously, thank God for 50% weeks at Hobby Lobby) the glass jars were the most "expensive" part, and I think on spent somewhere around $80 on jars. I picked up the woven baskets at HomeGoods, the wood shelves were just one piece of wood from Home Depot that cost around $12 and we cut our own shelves from it, and the brackets to attach the shelves to the walls were 2/$8 and we have ten total (2 for each shelf).

Other than that, I had the spray paint on hand to paint the shelves, and we also put a fresh coat of wall paint on which we also had on hand. So without further adieu, here is our pantry! Also, please excuse the terrible picture quality, it is so hard to take pictures of a pantry .. So, that is why in our next house I have requested a walk in pantry ;)

Here is the picture I posted a few weeks back as our "before" shot...

 

So, looking back at this picture, I am kind of ashamed to admit that I use to consider our pantry "organized" HA! 

And here our pantry is today..

 

Not only has the makeover created so much more space, cooking dinner at night is a dream with this pantry! Everything is so easy to find, and just goes right back into its place once I am done with it! I love it so much, that I have considered removing our standard builder grade door and replacing it with a glass door ... something along the lines of this style..



Plus it would add so much character to the kitchen! But, anyways, that's another post for another day! So let's continue on with the pantry break down shall we....

The most important thing with this entire makeover was making sure everything was in sealed containers. After my moth freak out, I wanted to make sure all of our food, and Coopers food would not have any more intruders. Which led me to the glass container storage...

These containers are so awesome! One large container holds one box of cereal, or a standard bag of chips. The medium containers are great for smaller bags of chips, or a box of Tricuits! And by adding the chalkboard labels myself, not only did I save money, but it is so easy to change out what is in each jar, and just to re-label what is in there!

 

You can see in this picture where I have used a different style jar for all my baking goods (sugar, flour, ect.) I chose these jars because it is easier to fit measuring cups in and out of the opening at the top. 

Once all of the jars were filled, I had so much "extra" stuff just floating around, I wanted to contain it all some way, so I broke it down into woven baskets to create even more open space on each shelf.

I have four total baskets in the pantry..

How I chose what went into each basket was fairly simple. We have a lot of canned beans, so I immediately knew one basket would be just for canned beans because this would eliminate 80% of the can good clutter.

Next was the breakfast basket. I love oatmeal in the morning, and I generally have two or three boxes of different kinds on hand, so this was a no brainer for me to throw away the boxes and just place them neatly in the basket. Another reason for throwing away the boxes, after doing my research, moths actually love cardboard, and the glue that holds the cardboard packaging together, so I knew I wanted to throw as many boxes away as possible.

The "snacks" basket was up next. Cody loves his snacks. They are a grab and go kinda meal, and we all know men love simple! So I took all our granola bars, snack packs, and whatever other snacky foods that were floating around and stuck them all in one basket.

Now that the bulk of the cardboard boxes were gone, I had so many miscellaneous items laying around, I created a basket just for them! Which has worked out great. Things like peanut putter, spaghetti sauce jars, syrup, and some baking goods have found their way into this basket, and it's so nice to have all the extra crap just stored in one area.

Once everything was in the proper basket, I broke out my chalkboard labels that I made for Thanksgiving and tied them to each basket with some jute. Simple, and goes along with the chalkboard jars!

Now that the shelves were organized, it was time to deal with all the crap at the bottom of the pantry. Stuff like solo cups, paper plates, nakpins, placemats, ect. Please tell me everyone has this kind of randomness in their pantry .... yes? no?

Well, I wanted it all off the shelves and into it's own area. So I picked up some $6 crates at Home Depot that were pretty plain jane, did a little DIYness to them, and put all of our extras into them and called it a day!

 

So, there you have it, our pantry makeover! I will do a short post tomorrow on how we made over the $6 Home Depot crates, and what I plan on doing with our spice rack!