Pantry Cabinet Organization and Printable Labels

This house could beat up our last house with its hands tied behind its back and one eye closed.  It has crown molding in every room, hardwood floors all over, French doors for days, and all the nooks and crannies my old home lovin’ heart could ever want.

But the storage space.  Ohhhh the storage space.  That’s the only way our last house could deliver a total knockout.  (Well, that and the 9 foot ceilings that I still miss.)

Remember our messy house tour the other week?  There’s a reason it’s been so messy around here.  Our organization is nonexistent still after 6ish months of moving in, and I realized the other day that needed to be remedied pronto.  Exhibit A was in our pantry cabinet:

Just food packages tossed haphazardly in no general order.  I hated packing Olivia’s lunches for preschool every morning riffling through this cabinet, and every day I went all Scarlet O’Hara and told myself, “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.”  (Didn’t think a boxing metaphor and a Gone With the Wind reference could work together in one post?  Challenge accepted, friend.)

But at some point I finally reach the meltdown phase.  The phase of “I can’t look at this mess for one more minute or I’m going to lose my mind.” That phase.  And there’s no stopping my fury after that point of no return.

So now our pantry cabinet looks like this!

Supplies Used: (Some affiliate links are provided for convenience.)

• Large Korken jars
• Small Korken jars
• Byholma baskets
• Vintage label holders
• Vintage label holder hooks
• Fleur de lis hooks
• Leather luggage tag labels
• Twine
• Command picture hanging strips
• Hot glue gun and hot glue sticks
• Chalkboard contact paper
• 8×10 photo frame with glass and backing removed
• Measuring cups set
• Measuring spoons set

We really did get spoiled by our last house with the big walk-in pantry and shelves for days.  I took it for granted, I really did.  Because our pantry situation now consists of this cabinet in the kitchen and then a couple of cabinets for an extra stock pile of paper towels and less used cooking ingredients allllllll the way in the laundry room.

I breathe a sigh of relief every time I open these cabinet doors now.

1. Hanging Organization

I’m far from a food blogger, but Robert and I cook mostly from scratch almost every night since we stick to a Paleo diet as much as we can.  It’s lots of measuring, lots of working with fresh produce and non-processed meat, so I guess it’s a good thing that most of what we eat isn’t stored in a pantry anyway.

I’ve seen this idea done before of hanging measuring cups and spoons from a cabinet door for easy reach, so it seemed like the perfect solution to keep me from always pawing through drawers looking for them.

I love baking with Olivia in the colder months of the year, so this little number happened just in time for the Thanksgiving/Christmas goodies.

I just used hot glue to attach these vintage label holders I picked up at Hobby Lobby.  If we ever want to take them down, we can scrape them right off, no holes or further damage done.

2. Inventory List

I like having a chalkboard or clipboard near our pantry to write down items as we run out of them, so I can just take a picture of it with my phone before I run off to the grocery store on my next trip.

I just used some chalkboard contact paper, a dry erase chalk marker, and a frame I already had hung up with a couple of Command picture-mounting strips.

3.  Packaged Food Storage

I found these baskets at IKEA last week for $8, and I just attached the labels using 75 cent luggage tags and twine.

4. Dry Ingredient Storage & Labels

I found the jars at IKEA too for $5 and $3 each, and I whipped up this label set on Picmonkey.  They add gobs of vintage charm!

Whew! I feel so much better now.

If you want a label printable set for yourself, you can click here or click the button below to subscribe and get access to my printable library:

For some reason, I’m always much more motivated to keep a spot organized if it’s pretty and has cute details, so I’m hoping that’s what will happen in this cabinet.  Now to just encourage the rest of the family to do the same thing.

I’m thinking there will be several other places in our house getting an organizational overhaul.  Would you want to see more organization type posts?  I sometimes forget about them, but they are definitely the best ones for helping me save my sanity and not become all Scarlet O’Hara-level dramatic.

Do you have any other kitchen-related organizational strategies you use or you’ve heard of to be really helpful?  Because we’re 1 cabinet down and I dunno like… 10 to go.  If you want a change though, you have to start somewhere, right?

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