Show me your pantries and closets!

[julifish]

No I didn't mean panties..... We had a water pipe break a week or so ago and now that the first floor is finally dry I need to put everything back in the pantry and closets. I'm having an anxiety attack just thinking about it. I'm looking for ways to stay organized and try to keep anything that could get damaged off the actual floor.

I have a large double pantry in my kitchen. Left side is for servingware, party supplies and other stuff we don't use regularly. Right side is for baking supplies, snack foods, candy (yes - I have a section for candy) and items we don't use regularly.

I also have a skinny pantry that I use for can goods, boxed goods (mac &cheese, cereals,) and grains.

I have a closet under the stairs with hanging space and I've been using a huge plastic bin for our shoes. Way in the back live our plastic (thank goodness I just switched from cardboard) bins with Christmas decorations.

While my linen closets upstairs did not get wet, I need to figure out something better for those as well.

I'm even willing to reorganize the whole system if someone can help me come up with a good idea. So show me your ideas - or feel free to hop a plane to Fla and come organize my stuff for me.

I'll take some pics and post when I get back from taking the kids to school.

[emmasmommy]

this TOTALLY said panties. and i about spat out coffee.

[nikkiARNGwife]

Originally Posted by emmasmommy

this TOTALLY said panties. and i about spat out coffee.

lol! I thought so too

[*Celeste*]

i totally read it as panties too!

[iScrap]

I thought it said panties and corsets...

[iScrap]

Originally Posted by julifish

Right side is for baking supplies, snack foods, candy (yes - I have a section for candy) and items we don't use regularly.

I'm pretty sure if you have a section for candy, then your pantry is perfect.

[*Celeste*]

panties and corsets! LOL!

[Amber Dixon]

I read it panties too haha!!!

I have the most unorganized pantry in the world, so I'm of absolutely no help to you, but I will keep checking in here for ideas because my pantry desperately needs organization!

[Tracie Stroud]

Originally Posted by emmasmommy

this TOTALLY said panties. and i about spat out coffee.

^^this.

[tanyiadeskins]

The other day for the first time I saw "The Amandas" the organize people's houses as a business... and I got some great ideas. Check on demand if you have cable to see episodes or maybe look them up online? I suck at organizing but am trying to get better.

[heathergw]

LOL!!! I'm glad I'm not the only one who keeps seeing panties!!!

I'm keeping an eye on this as we work on designing our new kitchen remodel... I'm gonna need some ideas on organization while we consider holding off on the island until we have more money saved because we need to fix up the bathrooms too and need a new couch and it looks like we might need to buy a new tv too, sigh

[seatrout]

Doesn't it just show where our minds are all at when ALL of us read it as panties !!
Minds in the gutter girls

[lizzyfizzy]

don't judge me.

[julifish]

I should have known not to put anything that could have remotely looked like panties. LOL! I'm afraid to post pics of my unorangized closests. You guys will only snicker behind my back and not in the thread - right????

LOL - LIzzy - I chuckled outloud. I think I might have a pair of those...only bigger. :blush:

[MamaBee]

hahahaha....

I love how organization looks... just can't do it myself... haha, someday, someday I'll have an organized house... for now I dream by pinning it in my organize board, which also has cleaning tips and money savers... geez, my boards aren't even organized...

[kscwgirl]

I'm so not organized. It doesn't help that I have virtually no cabinet space.

I also am STILL reading this as panties.

[KristinCB]

i thought this said panties too.... hahaha

We made a pantry this summer out of a corner of our kitchen that was wasted space, its not very organized yet though (kitchen still isn't all done :P)

SOO many good ideas on pinterest!!

[ripal]

Is it bad that my brother is moving to a new, bigger home next week and I feel so excited about them having a chance to organize entire home from scratch? lol I've asked SIL to look up my organize board and gardening board. My kids are suggesting their cousins to have a chalkboard paint on one of their walls in their bedroom! LOL I told SIL about it and she did mention that she's seen that idea about the menu wall in the kitchen and really considered it for her kitchen, except they don't have much wall space in their kitchen!

I would show my pics, but it's nothing but jars and jars of spices! LOL

[Jengerbread88]

I don't have photos, but I just reorganized our pantries, so this is kind of our set up:

We are using a closet in the hallway as our pantry. It has several shelves, as well as a deep half-shelf in the upper back.

The top full shelf houses breakfast foods- cereal, pop tarts, oatmeal...
The second shelf holds lunch items (mac and cheese, tuna, a couple of cans of ravioli, some ramen, anything quick and lunchy)... peanut butter, unopened jars of jelly, soup, etc.
Third shelf is where we keep dinner stuff for last-minute meals- boxes of hamburger helper, rice and pasta side dishes, sloppy joe sauce, pasta sauces, any quick fixes for the "Oh crap! I didn't lay anything out for dinner!" moments.
Our fourth shelf is all dessert- cake mixes, chocolate syrups, frostings, things like that.
The fifth shelf contains all of our cans of beans, canned tomatoes... all of the canned stuff that doesn't go on the other shelves.
The very bottom of the pantry (floor space) has gatorade and powerade, as well as our stash of ice pops (you know, the ones in plastic that can sit unfrozen for centuries until it's time to freeze them?), and sno cone syrups. Also our turkey roasting pan goes here, but only because there's no other place to put it in our kitchen.

The top half shelf of the closet holds the "stockpile"- an extra box of each of our absolute favorite cereals (we buy a new one each time we open this extra box), any extra tuna or ramen or mac that doesn't fit on the shelf, extra oatmeal... that stuff.


Some of our kitchen cabinets double as extra pantry space. One double-cabinet has a top shelf of just popcorn. I kid you not. Before we cleaned it out, we never could find popcorn, and we kept saying "We need to buy popcorn." When I cleaned out the shelves, I found about 15 boxes... so that shelf is ALL popcorn. Another shelf houses baking ingredients- flours, sugars, chocolate chips, almond bark, nuts, etc. Another shelf is entirely pudding mixes- since I make a lot of Amish bread, we go through a LOT of pudding mix.

We also have a separate spice cabinet... but it's a mess.

As for my panties, I like pantybypost.com or hane's women's boxer briefs! Lol.

[misfitinmn]

This was formerly a coat closet that we no longer needed to use as such, but we were limited on depth (it is quite wide). It's not pretty but we did the wire shelving and then bought the little wire drawers at Ikea. The drawers hold the boys food & snacks, chips, salad toppings (croutons, bacon bits, etc) and "treat" (cookies and those sort of things). And then my hubby just arranged it by food/type of meal.

[clearskies]

Seeing as I tend to be a bit on the modest side, here is my pantRy...



Cereal goes up top, then two shelves of misc food (like items grouped together) followed by a shelf of baggies (I have limited drawer space) and then snacks (where my boys can reach them).

[Andrea Gourley]

Wow, do you all have these massive cupboards in your kitchen's? Do you not have ordinary sized kitchen cupboards and units for keeping your food in?

[Sherri Tierney]

I want a pantry. I don't have one. Our food is kept in the cupboards in the kitchen. We have a hot water heater that is in the kitchen in a little closet. I keep trying to convince my honey to get us a tankless hot water heater so that I can have that closet for my pantry. That would solve so many storage issues!

Not everything here fits in the cabinets. There aren't many of them. Its an old house (built in the 40's so way newer than the last place we lived that was built in 1890!) and tons of cabinet space just wasn't a big deal then. The original cabinets are still in here and likely will be for at least 10 more years. They are really well made with solid wood and I can't see gutting them to get something of a cheaper quality. Some day I'd like to bump the kitchen out about 10 feet towards the back yard and if we ever do that THEN we will get new cabinets.

Anyway, I have a really tall bookcase in my kitchen that sorta serves as a pantry. I also put food in the big linen closet in the hallway but I'm trying to change that as that area is also where we go in the event of a storm warning and if those canned goods and glass bottles were to start flying around on us it wouldn't be pretty.

Today I just went and bought some big plastic containers to store things in for the kitchen. I always have rice, instant potatoes, oatmeal, beans, etc. taking up space in odd sized containers so hopefully this helps.

[YepBrook]

Originally Posted by Andrea Gourley

Wow, do you all have these massive cupboards in your kitchen's? Do you not have ordinary sized kitchen cupboards and units for keeping your food in?

I do not have massive pantry cupboards in my kitchen like these pics above, but typically (especially in newer homes) in the U.S. there is a closet in the kitchen area used for food storage. My townhouse was built in 1980 and we have always just used our small cupboards for food storage because there is not pantry closet. A few years ago we remodeled and now I use giant drawers for our food storage. I LOVE the drawers, they are so much better than the shelves.

[Melissa Bennett]

sooooooooooooo glad I am not the only one who thought it said panties!! LOL!

[Paula]

I don't have a pantry in my house, but I really want one! LOL

[breakingbrie]

This photo is quite old... We actually have a big pantry! You can't see it all in the pic, but on the wall across from the food shelves, we have all our recycling bins lines up. I'd take a better pic, but it's messier now :P The shelves in the photo are the only shelves in there... They were there when we moved in, so we painted in there and covered the shelves. When first moved in, there was a desk and sewing machine left in there from the people who lived here before us
--And don'tmind the ugly wall in my kitchen, this was before we painted it and finished it all.



Here's my girls' closet. It's 4 ft wide, and has a slanted ceiling *boo*. I hate the slant, I'd have done the shelving a whole different way if it wasn't like that and we had more $$ for it. But, this is just what we did... simple.



Our closets are pretty basic and blah... LOL. if I had lots of space, I'd love one like this-

[HeatherKS]

Umm, no. I won't. And you can't make me.

We live in a teeny tiny house and my desire for things to look less cluttered in our living areas means our closets are slightly out of control. I hate it.

[Darcy Baldwin]

Originally Posted by ripal

I would show my pics, but it's nothing but jars and jars of spices! LOL

But that's what makes your so awesome!!!! I blogged about mine awhile ago, but it's not really anything special as I didn't go out and buy fancy shelving. We just converted a regular double closet to a pantry with cheap shelves that I never painted. I wish I could redo it now to add more shelves to make stocking easier.

We've changed it even since then as you'll find no more of the big plastic containers and it's all glass now. Between Mason/Ball/Kerr jars and Ikea jars, we changed out most of our bulk supply. We've also added quite a few under the shelf hangers to put smaller things in like tomato paste, small tomato sauce and bulk spices, etc.




If you haven't visited pinterest, I would STRONGLY encourage it!

[YepBrook]

I WANT Darcy's Pantry!!! Oh the cooking potential in there. *sigh*

[ripal]

Darcy, how can I ignore the stuff after you pointed out to them? lol I started to search for the things with your sign to ignore!

Ok.. here are my awesome spice jars! I hardly buy any processed food, so everything on my dinner table comes from these jars!

All my gadgets:








And.. here comes my spice jars No comment on how much coffee MIL and DH consumed over the years!












Here's the cabinet(bought from Target) that I used to store all of my coupon shopping!

[Darcy Baldwin]

Ripal - tell me that bottom jar in the middle on the second to last photo isn't full of ghee. *swoon*

[ripal]

Yeap, that's ghee! MIL just told me this morning that we're running low on ghee, so I need to make a stop at Costco to buy butter(usually takes 2 costco packs to make enough for the jar).

[ripal]

Originally Posted by Darcy Baldwin

Ripal - tell me that bottom jar in the middle on the second to last photo isn't full of ghee. *swoon*

Reason #5489, we need to be neighbors!

[Darcy Baldwin]

2 mongo Costco packs? man...and I hoarde my mason jar full. Oh to have a full gallon of it! *swooning more* Can I come to your house to play?

[ripal]

LOL You know that I would be over the moon if you came to play in my kitchen!

But really, ANYONE who is visiting my area or living in my area is more than welcome to my home. Not only you'll get the homemade food, you'll get to see HOW I make it. I usually cook it after my friends(non-Indian) come, so that they get the full experience of Indian cooking.

[mlrw70]

Originally Posted by julifish

No I didn't mean panties.....

That is exactly what I read, though!