Week 1: Pantry Organization Part II

I'm still running a bit behind the suggested schedule of the 91 Day De-Clutter Challenge, but slow and steady wins the race, right?  (Besides, I don't have all the rooms they budget time for.  My house is tiny!  I'll catch up!)

Yesterday I got my "pantry cabinets" all cleared up, and today I managed to get the big hall pantry!  Hoo boy, look at that before mess:

Scary, right?  Obviously this space has been used less as a "kitchen pantry" and more as a "I don't know where to put this so I'm shoving it in here" closet.  No more!  Behold, a functional (if not entirely full) pantry!  (I apologize for the image quality on the after photos - there's no light in the back of the house, really, and it was night when I finished organizing.  But that's why I have an Ott-Lite hanging from the top of the pantry, as you'll see in another photo below!  LOL)

Nice, right?  Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.  I sorted through all the various extra medicines mom sent over for us (some expired, most surprisingly not) and used part of one shelf as a mini "medicine cabinet".  (We have one in our bathroom, but it's ridiculously small and already full of things like toothbrushes and electric shavers and the like.)  Paper goods got their own shelf.  And breakfast/dinner items are on the top shelf while snack and baking items went on the second shelf.  I'm sure I'll have to adjust down the road, but for now it's clean, functional, and nothing leaps out at you when you open it (or dives in the way of the door when you try to close it!)

Shelf by shelf view (including my Ott-Lite hanging at the top of the pantry to help me find things at night!):

By the way, did you notice the freakish amount of plastic grocery bags we had stuffed in there in the before picture?  If not, check the top shelf on the right.  They're actually stacked higher than the door frame!  We like to save them and use them for car trash bags, scraping cat boxes, emergency diaper-disposal bags, and for wrapping up anything that has potential to get extra-stinky and inviting to the cats in the regular trash can (like those foam trays chicken breasts and ground beef come on), so they're a necessary evil for us - but storing them is a pain!  But...

I'm also calling this a Pinspiration post because, look!  I found this:



Super easy to do, and the bags are nice and compact, and just as important, they're easy to open up again.  Would you believe I went from that huge mess up top to this?

There are 30 plastic grocery bags inside there - I did throw away maybe 20 or so bags because they had holes in them, but still, what a difference!  Awesome!  I love Pinterest!

And hooray for my now-usable pantry!