Pantry Troubles

The builder of our home was clearly a man, who didn't cook. Or have a clue how much food teen boys consume in a week.

Believe me when I say these guys can put away some serious quantities of food!


If I only kept food in my kitchen I would have to go back to the store every two days to restock. It is absolutely ridiculous. So one of the big goals I had when I remodeled my kitchen a few years ago was to add storage and to add better storage. Sometimes you have square inches in a cabinet but they are so hard to get to that it is unusable space. I had a lot of those bizarre awkward crevices in my kitchen when we bought this house. Tearing out the U shaped kitchen and adding in an island gave us better function and better storage but it still needed some tweaking. I really only store food in the pantry or in the basement and the other cabinets are all dishes and cookware and general kitchen stuff. I hate one use kitchen items and try to really limit all the little one use appliances, like waffle iron, electric can opener etc..

Every winter I try to clean out and reorganize my closed spaces. Closets, drawers, pantry. All the places that get crammed full during the course of daily life. I love new shelf liner and the fresh clean feel of newly organized space. This year I decided my kitchen cabinets and closed spaces needed a fresh coat of paint too. But I'll get to that in a different post.


Let's talk Pantry! Mine is teeny,weeny, tiny. But It can't be expanded with our floor plan so I need to maximize every inch!  And it needs to be easy access and easy to organize. And it doesn't hurt if it is cute.

So my pantry got a fresh look. Grey paint inside and I covered the stupid wire shelves. I hate that if something drips on the top shelf it drips all the way to the floor so I used foam core board and covered the shelf with it and covered the foam core in contact paper to make it easily wipeable.

I added a little drawer unit and some cute baskets too! 
 I forgot to take a before pic, as usual but I promise this is a huge improvement. This was like a cartoon closet where you opened it and everything including the kitchen sink fell out on the floor. The door is not a standard size door, it is tiny so I am still looking for storage I can attatch to the inside of the door but right now our chore list is taped there and the reusable bag holds our bags of cereal. Very important when your kids eat a bag a day. And check out my can storage!!! I am loving that thing!!

I keep onions and garlic and potatoes in the baskets on the floor and also a camp lantern if the power goes out. As you can see, it doesn't hold much but I am workin' with what I got. I am fully open to any suggestions for more storage options if y'all want to post them in the comments!!

But I like the fresh clean feel of the new contact paper shelves. It is an improvement and that makes me happy.