Organized Pantry

Over the past two weeks, I've been working on organization in my house. With two little ones, it's been real hard to keep up with household chores and keep closets, drawers, laundry piles and our pantry neat and tidy. So I figured I should get my butt into gear and get organized before my house starts looking like those houses on Hoarders (omg EW!).

Step one of this process was pantry organization. Brace your eyes, does your food storage look something like this?

I can't believe I actually showed you that picture!

{I'm so embarrassed, but I figured you needed to see what I was dealing with before I got to work}.

With a little help from my mom, and a couple of stores (Ikea, Homegoods, Christmas Tree Shop and Target for all storage containers and labels), I was able to come up with simple ways to create more space for food storage.

My general rule was this: All boxes must go, unless they fit into my one crate of boxed food (that's right, ONE crate). I know this seems hard (my mom didn't think I was going to be able to do it), but this is doable. And by sticking to my rule, I was able to transform my pantry into this:

By emptying the cabinets and placing all the food in front of my eyes, I was able to then group food together by genre (baking goods, kids snacks, adult snacks, cookies, pasta, morning food- cereal/oatmeal/pancake mix, canned food, spices, and boxed food). Each group of food was then placed into baskets or containers (depending on size).

Containers were labeled and viola, pantry organized!

Is your pantry picture worthy? I'd love to see how you keep your food organized!