A few weeks ago, my pantry was in desperate need of organizing, but I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on this project with Christmas around the corner! So I decided to clear out the clutter, use some products I had on hand, and get to work! It turns out, organizing the pantry on a budget can be done!
I knew I had to get our pantry in shape quickly with the holidays fast approaching. However, sticking to a small budget was vital. While the inside of this pantry could use a coat of paint and a few matching bins, baskets, or totes, it wasn’t on the agenda right now!
Today I’m sharing with you my process of organizing a space in my home without spending any money. While I have no problem with spending a little money on organizing projects from time to time, I know that some put off organizing because of the finances involved. I want to show you that a space can be transformed without even spending a dime!
I’m very blessed with a little walk in pantry in my home. It actually didn’t used to be here! My wonderful husband remodeled two very tiny closets that were not functioning well into this one small walk-in pantry. It’s a very unusual feature in our area for a 1700 square foot home to have a walk in pantry so I feel very blessed (by both the pantry and my husband who made it happen!)
However, this is the state my pantry was in when I started. Pretty terrible, huh?! Food was stacked too high, things were falling over, and do you see that big bag in the bottom right hand corner? Yep, that’s the leftover Halloween candy. 🙂 I promise I don’t sneak into it!
I set to work and began by emptying the entire contents of the pantry onto my kitchen countertops. It was rather overwhelming to see how so much stuff was able to fit into such a small space.
As I was removing the contents of the pantry, I tried to sort by category. I placed like items together into the following categories: baking supplies, condiments & spreads, canned goods, pasta & rice, snacks, plastic bags and wraps, and workout supplements.
While I sorted, I also removed anything that was expired or stale and tossed them.
Here is our snacks after sorting. It’s still quite a lot because I have over-purchased in the past few weeks. I was unaware how much we actually had so now we will have to work our way through these! Just another benefit of a clean pantry…you will spend less money at the grocery store because you know what you have on hand! 🙂
Then I went to work cleaning the actually pantry. Here is the part where I would love to add a pop of color on the walls or pretty baskets to store my pantry items. However, this was a quick, budget-friendly project so I stuck with what I had on hand.
The top shelves hold my husband’s workout supplements, a tub of paper goods, a basket with my aprons and placemats and a small space to store extras I buy in bulk at Sam’s Club.
The next shelf holds all of our bags and wraps, a lazy Susan to store extra refrigerator snacks, a basket with bulk spices, a bin of cookie cutters, my rice and wheat, and my cookbooks.
Moving on down I have a basket with my pasta, another lazy Susan for condiments, and my expandable can stacker.
Related: A Simplified Meal Planning System
The next shelf holds our baking items including our sugars, oats, spot for homemade breads and rolls, as well as my stand mixer.
The bottom shelf is dedicated to snacks. I put all of these on the bottom shelf so they are easily accessible to little hands! 🙂 There is a small green basket for pre-packaged items, a jar with lid for applesauce pouches (a staple in our house), and a space for crackers and chips. I placed the small bags of nuts in a tote and the fruit in a bowl at the end of the shelf.
I previously had my fruit sitting on my countertops, but I’m looking to clear my counters off even more for a more streamlined, clean look so into the pantry they went!
On the floor is where we store our trash bags, tub of puppy food, and our bulk wheat and rice.
I hope these ideas have inspired you to try and organize your pantry. I didn’t spend a dime on this project and the outcome has really improved the ease of use of our pantry.
If you are looking for some pantry organizing products, a few of my favorites include:
- 3-tier Expandable Can Stacker
- Lazy Susans
- Under Shelf Wire Basket
- Wire Lined Storage Baskets
- Clear Plastic Snack Baskets
- Chalkboard Labels and Eraser Chalk Pens
Have you organized your pantry lately?
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Amy @ The Quiet Homemaker says
Wow this is amazing! We are building a cabin and for the first time I will have a pantry! I am so very excited to use some of your ideas to keep it organized. Thanks for the post! Now I think I need to clean out my cabinets :).
Kaitlin says
Thanks Amy! Building a cabin?! That’s so exciting! My husband and I dream of one day building a country home, but until then we are DIYing in our little builder-grade! 😉 Congratulations! Pantries are the best!
Amy @ The Quiet Homemaker says
The waiting is so hard. I bought the house that we are in as a single mom. It is old and quite run down. We are working hard to make sure that it is all paid for when we move in, so it is taking quite a bit longer than I would like, lol. I am very country and can not wait til I can farm and grow my animals to full time food. It is a huge dream of ours.
Keep working toward it, you will get there! God gives us those dreams for a reason!
Amy
kim domingue says
We’re preparing to put a small addition onto our home. It will be our new laundry room. The current laundry room that is right off of the kitchen will be turned into a walk-in pantry/butler’s pantry. Not only will it store dry goods, it will store an upright freezer, small appliances and most of my pots and pans and an extra deep sink. We realized, as we were talking about remodeling the kitchen, that cabinets are terribly expensive and we don’t find upper cabinets to be very useful for us (we’re all quite short). We realized that a pantry with open shelves would end up actually costing much less and be far more useful that a kitchen full of cabinetry in which to store everything. Plus, we’re all very much “out of sight, out of mind” people in this house so having everything in plain sight on open shelving will save a lot of headaches, lol! I’m so excited! I’ve wanted a walk-in pantry for twenty years!
My favorite storage tip is to use large clear glass jars to store sugar, flour, rice, beans, pasta, coffee, tea and such in. Bugs and ants can’t get into a tightly sealed glass jar. And you can scan your shelves at a glance and see what you’re low on. I use gallon glass jars that were saved from concession stands at the ballpark and half gallon and quart jars saved from items that I buy on a regular basis so they are all the same sizes and shapes. My daughter and her fiancée have started their own collection of jars to use in the same way, lol! They love dill pickles so they’ve been buying the gallon size jars at Costco!
By the way, I love your stand mixer! I finally, finally got one just like it for my very own last year for Christmas. I’m still so excited to have one that mine lives on my kitchen counter so I can admire it all day long, lol!
Kaitlin says
Thanks for sharing! We are the total opposite around here…all very tall and I dream of cabinetry that goes all the way up the ceiling! 🙂 I love using glass jars! I’m a mason jar hoarder and love using them for storage! I used to use them for my pasta and rice before we moved. I should really get back to using them in my pantry!
And thanks about the stand mixer! I don’t know what I’d do without it! 🙂 haha
kim domingue says
Lol! I was the tallest person at my house for years until the boychild passed me up finally! The hubs is a half inch shorter than I am. That doesn’t sound like much until you factor in length of limbs. The hubs is long through the body but short in the limbs while I’m the opposite. I probably have a good six inches of reach on him! But the six foot tall boychild doesn’t live here any more and the hub’s arms haven’t stretched out any sooooo…..no uppers for us, lol!
Glass jars we can agree on though! I even buy my spaghetti sauce predicated on the type of jars it’s packaged in! Two organic brands use mason jars so I buy those. You would think that at some point you would be over run with mason jars but we just keep finding more and more things to use them for.