One thing I am really striving for this year is organization.  And anyone who knows me knows that just being organized is not enough, I want it to be easy on the eyes too.

Here is my crazy pantry.

Oh my gosh!!!  I am so embarrassed!  Look how unorganized I have let it become. 

And don’t even get me started on the cat box that is in there.  I am sooo over it. 

On a whim I went to the garage and found all of my paint colors.  I chose Tuscan Sun by Behr which is the color of our living room and hallway.  It is warm and inviting which I thought would be nice for our pantry.  Once I had gotten the gumption to actually find a paint color I decided to go ahead and paint the pantry… which has never been painted since we have lived here.

I pulled everything off of the shelves.

Look at all this stuff. I pulled in a folding table to put it all on so that it wouldn’t be in the kitchen for the kids to get into.   I was appalled by the amount of food we had in there that I had forgotton about.  How was I ever going to organize it??? 

I started to feel overwhelmed.

Instead of allowing myself to get paralyzed I grabbed my paint and roller and went to town on those walls and shelves. 

Yay for Tuscan Sun!!!   I bought some more baskets and a couple more glass jars.  I then went through and made sure everything was still good and tossed what was not.

In my jars I have Oats, Flour, Whole Wheat Flour, Sugar, and Powdered Sugar.

Here are the boy’s snacks on the bottom shelf so that they can get to them.

So wonderful.  In the baskets I organized them in the following categories: Rice and Pasta, Sauces, Snacks, Booze, other Sweeteners (like Splenda and Brown Sugar that need to be kept in their bags) and other Cooking Supplies. 

I have some plans for labeling too, but that will be a later post. 

So what do you think? 

Here is another quick before and after.

BEFORE

                                                                                                                                                                                           

 AFTER

 

And I have one of these bad boys to be installed to go out to the garage.