Pantry Makeover

I have a confession to make. I'm officially obsessed with Pinterest. There are so many great ideas, and I always love a good reason to get creative. This weekend I decided to have a Pinterest project day and get a bunch of fun things done around the house. First up was re-organizing my pantry. I'm a pretty organized person, so my cluttered pantry had been getting to me.

I know. Embarrassing, right?

I looked up some ideas on Pinterest, and ended up coming across this blog. She has so many good suggestions on ways to organize everything. I wish I had a pantry as big as hers, but I don't so I knew I wouldn't be able to use most of the ideas. I decided it was time to make a trip to Walmart and see what type of supplies I could come up with.

Some of the items ended up not working out, and some are for other fun projects I have planned (stay tuned hehe). My first step was to take everything out of the pantry. My goodness, there was a LOT to go through.

Buster says "hi!"

I ended up decided on some stacking baskets and two tiered spice racks. After organizing all of my food, I used the spice racks for my canned food and sauces. I absolutely LOVE how it turned out. My favorite part is that the top rack is tall enough to slide extra cans under. Hidden storage - score!

Next I used the stacking baskets to organize all of my boxed food and pastas. There was just enough space on the side for my cereal, some snacks, and bread. Another good find! Everything fits really well. I have another storage area in my laundry room for extra boxed food. It's nice to just have one or two of each type out at a time.

Next up was a trip to Big Lots to get some containers and Lowes for chalkboard paint. Another thing I learned on Pinterest is that you can put chalkboard paint on just about anything. I bought some great containers and got to work taping squares on them to make labels.

I'm a little OCD when it comes to projects like this, so taping the labels took me quite a while. Eventually it was time to paint. I learned that it probably would have been better to use a thinner brush to help control the dripping. I also learned that I should have been more patient in between coats...

Being patient in between coats probably would have made the paint turn out a little more even. What can I say...I was anxious to see my entire pantry in action!

I also learned that I am VERY bad at staying inside of the lines of the tape. Apparently being anxious equals bumpy paint AND another whole day to scrape off the messy sides with a butter knife. Oops! In the end they turned out amazing though.

I love it regardless! So here is the final product. I have all of the sweets at the very top (where I can't reach them easily, which is always good). Then I have the containers I made with some boxed items we don't use very often hidden behind them (things like pancake mix, cornstarch, etc.) Next I have my canned goods, oils, and sauces. At eye level I have my boxed items, pasta, bread, and cereal.

And then at the very bottom I have a little three drawer organizer (that I bought when we first moved in). It has my herbs and spices, spice packets, and bags in it. See, at least I had PART of the pantry organized to begin with! :-)

And here's a look at the whole thing.

I think it came out really nice. And getting this done just gives me the itch to do some more projects! Ahhh I'm so excited to be using my creative muscles again. Oh creativity, how I've missed you!