Kitchen Pantry Organization!

Well since we are wrapping up kitchen organization month- I decided it was again time to take everything out of the pantry and organize it a little bit nicer.

I had done this right before Christmas since we were leaving for Florida and wanted to make sure we didn't have food hanging around that would go bad and we got rid of a TON of expired food. Some food was so old that it had probably been there for years. We always seem to have things hanging around that no one eats and we don't really know where they come from...

Anyways, the pantry wasn't TOO terrible but I wanted to organize it a little bit better. My mom claims that each shelf has its own category. The top is snacks, the second is baking, the third is pasta and cooking, and the last is soup and other canned goods (and my beloved mac and cheese). However, the third and fourth shelves were a little mixed up and that did not make sense to me at all. I needed to get in there and fix it up!

Here's what we started with:

Do I even need to ask you what the first step of organization is? If you've been reading you know this! Empty it out!

Everything was emptied out onto the floor, I vacuumed out each shelf to get all the little crumbs out of there, and then I inspected each and every item to make sure they were not expired. There were only 3/4 items that had expired and needed to be tossed out. The rest needed to get sorted and placed back inside!

I kept the shelves the same "categories" and since it's not my own pantry I couldn't go crazy buying organizers and arranging everything exactly like I wanted it, but that's okay =)

Starting at the bottom shelf... All of the canned food items are lined up by type and by expiration date so when anyone needs one they can pull one from the front and everything will still be lined up nicely! It also holds all of our pop tarts and mac and cheese!

The next shelf up holds all of our cooking sides and pasta. There are also jars of pasta sauce, extra condiments, and boxes of rice. Basically everything we need to make dinner =)

The next shelf up is our baking shelf. There are all different types of vinegar and wine in the back because they wouldn't fit on the next shelf down but everything else is baking. There is sugar, chocolate chips, and boxes of muffin and cupcakes mixes in there as well.

The top shelf is full of snacks. We have chips, granola bars, cheez-its, etc. This shelf is hard to organize because people are in and out of it all day long and not everyone in my family cares as much about organization as I do =)

And here it is with the doors closed...

Gotta love a nice organized pantry! I wish i could get baskets and plastic containers to organize it even more but I think need my own place first!