Best Pantry Organization Projects of 2018

Best Pantry Organization Projects is one of our most popular and favorite annual blogs to publish! I mean, who doesn’t love a pretty, happy pantry?! =D That’s why we created the hashtag #happypantrythursday on Instagram to share our favorite transformations every week!

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It’s no surprise that we love a good pantry to organize! As a high traffic area, it’s one of the most accessed spaces in the home. Every person in the house is in and out of this space multiple times a day. It’s easily one of spots to take the biggest disorganized hit! There’s no shock when a client’s inquiry includes the pantry as one of the first priorities.

But how do you keep that gorgeous pantry organized? Two common mistakes people make after completing a pantry organization project are (well, any organization project, really!):

#1 – You MUST fully complete the project by crossing the finish line. As Professional Organizers, we pride ourselves on the fact that we know how to FINISH a project. Every single possible label is made and every last item is given a home. This is where a lot of people can fall short. They start out strong and somewhere around half way loose clarity on how to finish or maybe just loose the motivation. In order to have long term organized success, you must completely finish organizing every item in the pantry.

#2 – Manage the incoming every time you visit the grocery store. Yes, we know that takes extra effort but we know it’s vitality in the process! Give yourself 15 extra minutes when unloading groceries to go back and check for expired, toss stale items or refill containers. That little bit each time will save you from another overhaul down the road!

Now, on to the main event!!

West University Place Pantry

One of our absolute favorite clients moved last year and we were so tickled when she called us in to help set up her new kitchen and pantry! We wanted to make things visible and easy to access for this young family. It was so fun to be able to reuse all her bins from the previous pantry we organized and just add a few more in the same style! That’s one of our favorite parts about shopping with The Container Store because they carry the same tried and true brands for years. The best organizing products on the market are available and often in the same sizes a decade later! This makes re-purposing easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

When you have the room to spread out, I love separating pastas and grains. This gives you the best visibility to your inventory. So when a recipe calls for quinoa or farfalle, you don’t have to guess or dig around to see how much you have!

After trying so many containers, we definitely cater to our favorite OXO containers. Just be sure to stay as consistent as possible with size of container.

Clear labeling is a must and keep the categories flexible. Anytime we use our BAE water hyacinth baskets we always reach for the bin clip labels. Last, but not least, hand lettered by yours truly, Meggie. 😉

Pearland Elfa Pantry

We are so excited to be part of the Contained Home Team in partnership with The Container Store. This has allowed us to help clients not only reorganize, but also redesign a space from the bottom up. One of these transformations took place with a sweet couple who love to cook and needed to revamp their kitchen flow and pantry set up.

Hands down, I always vote drawers over cabinets or shelves any day. Drawers were added in the middle as well as these super nifty gliding tiered shelves for canned goods and spices. Being able to pull out a drawer immediately gives you amazing visibility to your stash. Nothing at the back gets lost like it can in a cabinet or on a shelf. Baskets can mimic the same idea as drawers when a tear out isn’t possible or over the budget.

Part of this new set up meant making sure we kept the frequently used ingredients front and center. Letting the side shelves hold the less often accessed items.

Their home had a storage area that could be used as a second pantry however we wanted all food to live in one spot. Then letting the secondary, smaller pantry area serve as an extension for kitchen storage – food storage containers, entertaining and the like.

Missouri City Fresh Start Pantry

This next young family had to deal with renovations after Hurricane Harvey in the fall of 2017. While a tumultuous beginning is never our hope, we are so grateful to be able help these families start a new chapter. Because they were just moving back into their home, we were able to set them up for success from day 1!

Being able to stand things up not only looks nicer but makes it so much easier to access one thing at a time! Dividers were an easy solution for these platters on the top shelf which had the clearance without bulking up valuable kitchen space.

This client also had her own decorative sticker labels that we were so happy to hand letter for her as the perfect finishing touch!

One of our absolute must-haves is a tiered shelf to be able to showcase your collection of cans and oils! You can see everything at a glance. No more buying your fourth can of garbanzo beans for a recipe that only needs one!

Tomball Family Pantry

A great walk in pantry is a wonderful place to start when getting a family organized in their new home! Busy working parents and even busier kids means we want this space to be easy and clear to pack lunches, grab snacks and make meals!

In order to make it very simple for this family to cook we added a wall Elfa unit on an underutilized blank wall so that all of their cooking oils, sprays and spices could be kept in one area with the least amount of steps into the pantry. This kind of unit can also be hung on the door depending on space availability and aesthetics.

Clear bins were the clear go-to for this family. We used simple label tape from our favorite Brother Label Maker which can easily be switched out later if needed. Another common product we recommend is the stainless steel grocery bag holder which can be wall mounted anywhere to store reusable plastic bags. Whether in the pantry or a utility space or even inside a cabinet door, this is the best one we have used!

Memorial Pantry Perfection

When you begin with an amazing stylish floor tile, this just makes our job so much easier! What a fun family to work with who was also getting comfortable in their new home before the holidays. We really wanted to set up a system that made sense for the pantry, right down to the coffee bar!

These white and birch Tosca baskets are our new obsession. There’s something so elevated and crisp about how they look in a space. So as not to interfere with how beautiful they are, we labeled in clear label tape the space right below the basket on the shelf itself.

A full row of bamboo tiered shelves was the perfect choice for the canned goods they had to store. The expandable ones are always our preferred as space sizes can vary. This goes for any finish!

Complete with coffee bar and our adored YouCopia CoffeeStack organizers so you can choose whichever flavor you are craving! We also added a back stock bin for the bulk of the capsules so that we could have a variety available below. Make sure whenever you are storing your Costco overflow you are storing it as close to your “in use” inventory and labeling clearly!

Will your pantry make our Best of 2019 list??! Bring it on! We already have a few contenders in the mix but are looking forward to so many more!