Kitchen Pantry Update: Part 2

I am back with a real time live pantry update!  I am sure the suspense was really getting to you... wink wink.

But, I will say, we made some feel good exciting progress yesterday.  But as a reminder to where we left off with day one of the pantry takeover, we started out by:

• Clearing everything out
• Lining the wire shelves with foam board and pretty shelf liner

The next step in the process was to edit our current food inventory.  Here is what we started with:

It's always good every 6-12 months to dig through all of your food and say goodbye to those items you will never eat or that are expired.  Alfredo sauce from 2011 anyone?  Yeah, that was in our pile...

I edited down the types of packaging we were using, said farewell to expired items {which was only a few things}, and placed all of the remaining items in boxes and bags, back into their respective containers.

It made such a difference to pair things down and repackage things into our containers and ditch all of the bags and boxes.  We gained a third of our table space back just in that process alone.  To me, that also means we just gained back a third of our cabinet and pantry storage space as well!  Hurrah!

Now that we have purged things down and have a good idea of our inventory, we could start planning how we wanted things to go back.  My hubby is a visual guy, so he started by drawing a plan while I started making a shopping list:

I wanted the hubs to give his input on this project since he uses the kitchen just as much or more than anyone {he is the chef in this family}.  So, when planning out the storage, we chatted about our previous struggles, how we use our kitchen, and where things make the most sense to be stored.  Now that we have the stool, we plan on storing our snacks lower to prevent climbing.  We hope to add produce baskets in the snack section since we are huge apple, banana and clementine eaters, and they tend to take over our counters.  Less frequently used items will be placed up higher {although ice cream cones on a daily basis would be awesome!}, and daily breakfast essentials would be right at arms reach.

Once we had everything planned, decided the storage we need to invest in, and took inventory of what we already had, I started to make some labels for our favorite pantry containers.

Of course, you would assume that I would instantly go to my Silhouette and start cutting fancy pants labels, and believe you me, I thought about it.  But, I also thought I would show you how easy it is to make pantry labels at home, even if you don't wish to invest in an electronic cutting tool.  All you need is a simple craft punch and some vinyl.

I used the punch to quickly create decorative labels for the sides of the canisters.  The vinyl has a peel off back, just like a sticker.

 So within seconds I had labels!

Chalkboard labels can be made in the same fashion by either painting chalkboard paint onto cardstock and punching them out, or by purchasing chalkboard contact paper.  But I learned that chalk pens work equally as well on colored vinyl as they do the chalkboard labels {writing on and wiping off with ease}, so I went with some color!

I can clearly see the contents of the containers, but I like the idea of the label so I can add the date on the container to know when they were purchased.  That way, we can keep track of freshness.

Next and final steps will be to find the perfect produce storage and to put everything back into the pantry and cupboard and call it donzo!

What are your favorite methods for labeling pantry goods?