UHeart Organizing: A Pantry Project To Be Proud Of!

Today I am thrilled to introduce you to a super lovely gal, Megan, from the blog Honey We're Home.  Megan has amazing design style and she adores organizing as well, and to me, organizing and style go together like peas and carrots!  She recently updated her incredible pantry space, and is stopping by today to share all the details and motivate us to take another look at our own personal kitchen spaces!  I looove me some pantry projects!

Hi guys!  I've been anxiously awaiting my contributing post on I Heart and wanted to make it a good one for you since I know you've come to appreciate great, relevant content on this blog.  I saved up a super big project that I've been wanting to tackle for a long time to share with y'all- a pantry overhaul.  I've seen so many beautifully organized and functional pantries here so I was very inspired to dig in and redo ours.

Our pantry is giant, but was kind of a mess before I got started.  And the thing is, I completely redid the pantry about a year and a half ago, but I think this is an area that needs a thorough clean out about once a year.  The picture below is how our pantry looked right before I cleaned it out {for the second time}.

After two trips to the The Container Store for cork paper and clear storage containers, and several days of editing, purging, and organizing . . . we have a nicely organized pantry {again!}.

The first thing I did was line the lower three shelves with cork paper to keep them from getting scuffed up since our shelves are simply painted wood and needed the extra protection.  

The key to organizing our pantry was to create zones.  The middle shelves that are most accessible hold the most-often reached for items like pastas and canned goods.  Baking goods went one shelf higher and heavy small appliances are on the lower shelf.  The vases, serve-ware and candle holders go up high since they aren't being reached for everyday.

I decided to decant all of our baking supplies, pastas, and crackers.  I decided that I like the clean, natural look of no labels so I'm going with that for now.

I also invested in two large, sturdy, plastic 3-tier organizers for our canned goods.  I like these because they are wide and deep and store a lot.

Baskets are a great item to use in a party to contain items that you don't necessarily need to see all the time.  Two blue baskets from World Market hold some random items like mac-n-cheese and roman noodles and a wooden basket holds our chips. 

The chocolate area is my favorite- I dip into those dark chocolate Hershey Nuggets every night.  My 2-year old son loves M&Ms but I have to teach him that he only gets a "few."

The biggest change to our pantry is that I finally realized that we had room to store our large serving platters, vases, and candle holders in one place so I gathered them from random cabinets and the butler's pantry and transferred them to the top shelves.  I love being able to see what we have and keeping them in one place is such a bonus.

Thanks Jen for having me over today!

"My name is Megan and I am a lawyer by day, design and decor lover by night, and Mama to the sweetest 2-year old boy you've ever seen. I'm passionate about fitness (and chocolate!) and could not live without my relationships, girl talk, and my morning coffee. I've been blogging for two years over at Honey We're Home, sharing my love of keeping things organized and beautiful at our house.  My efforts to live in the moment and cook more are an adventure in progress."