Kitchen Pantry Re-Organization

Over the last few months, I’ve shared various parts of my house on the blog as I settle into the new place. One thing I haven’t shown is my kitchen pantry and for good reason. I’ve been quite embarrassed by it.

The pantry is on the small side, slightly wider than the width of a standard interior house door and less than two feet deep. As someone who cooks and bakes as much as I do, I have a lot of kitchen supplies that really do not fit into the space well. We’re talking 20lb bags of flour and sugar and chocolate chips in bulk from Costco. As a result, my kitchen pantry is completely stuffed to the brim. A few friends actually saw it during our first house party and they were teasing me about how full it was, so I’ve been careful not to open it in front of company ever since.

This month, OXO and The Container store are doing a POPtober challenge. I was lucky enough to be one of the bloggers chosen to participate. We were provided with some OXO product and asked to show how we can re-organize our kitchen pantry, cabinet or counter with the tools given. Two of the participating bloggers will be chosen for the grand prize: up to $650 of their “wish list” of OXO Storage & Organization tools and a $350 elfa gift card for The Container Store. I really, really hope I win because I know there is so much more I can do with the OXO organization tools and an elfa Shelving system to make my kitchen even better.

There is also an OXO Facebook giveaway which you can enter for a chance to win: a prize pack worth $500, including their choice of OXO Storage & Organization tools (up to $250), as well as a $250 elfa gift card.

So, now for what I’ve been dreading to show. My “before” shot of my kitchen pantry. (Hopefully you’re not viewing this on a super large monitor.) Here goes:

This, actually, is more organized than after the first house party. I tried to do some cleaning-up after that viewing, but it’s still pretty crowded, with many items piled on top of each other.

For the POPtober challenge, I was given these POP containers.

Getting this package got me really excited. I already have a few POP containers in my kitchen and I love them. When friends come over, they often examine the ones I have on my counter and I’m always recommending them.

I keep all of my essential baking ingredients in them, and they’ve helped me significantly cut down on prep time. The containers are so easy to open the container –you just press the top button. So even when one hand is occupied because it’s holding a whisk, or maybe it’s sticky with dough, I can quickly access the ingredient I need with just one hand. My ingredients also stay fresh and the containers stack up nicely too since they have flat lids. I also like the square and rectangle design because it makes it more space efficient.

Having these extra ones allowed me to put more organize more loose ingredients. On the left side of the upper shelf, I have my breakfast items. I put my cereals into the POP cereal dispensers. On a turntable, I have my spreads like cookie butter, Nutella, peanut butter. On the right side, I have my most used baking items: flours, sugars, chocolate chips. I put them on this shelf because it’s the easiest one for me to reach.

On the lower shelf, is more baking and cooking ingredients. I have my little POP containers which I stacked up. I stored ingredients I use, but not as often, so I don’t need as big of a container for them (for example: white chocolate chips, powdered sugar). I have food coloring in a small basket, and then a two-tier turntable of spices.

As you can imagine, while having more of these containers definitely helped, my pantry really needed even more of a makeover. So I did a lot of research. For inspiration, I browsed The Container Store’s large collection of kitchen organization tools. It gave me so many great ideas and I purchased several items to help organize my kitchen pantry further.

First, I bought a door rack which provided me with tiers of wire shelves. This added so much more storage space! It fits perfectly on my door and provides sturdy support for heavy items.  I was able to easily organize cans, jars, boxes of pasta and more on it.

By the way, the burlap cloth and gold ribbon lining the wire shelves are my addition. I wanted to make the wire shelves a little more unique.

I also purchased multiple OXO turntables (and not just because this is an OXO challenge. I tested a few brands both cheaper and more expensive, but found that the OXO just spun more smoothly even with a lot of weight on them). I actually didn’t even know there was such a thing as kitchen closet turntables until this project, but now I adore them. No more needing to move aside items to get to ones behind them– all I need to do is spin and everything is easily accessible.

Finally, I purchased several baskets for all my other loose items.

So this is the finished result (unfortunately, I can’t open the door any wider because it’s up against the sliding glass door):

I gotta say, I’m pretty pleased with myself. I can’t believe how organized it looks and how much empty space I suddenly have. I kept looking around to make sure I hadn’t forgotten to put some stuff back in, but everything is back in there! I actually was able to add more things that weren’t originally in there. For example, the cereals and the common baking ingredients were previously on the kitchen counter.

Here is the before and after side by side comparison:

I don’t plan on stopping here. I hope to get even more creative and organized. As a reminder, you can enter OXO’s Facebook giveaway. You can also check out my current OXO kitchen wishlist:

Follow Kirbie ‘s board OXO Kitchen Wishlist on Pinterest.