Our No-Pantry, Pantry Tour

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Hi, Friends! Hope you all are having a great summer so far! We’ve been enjoying pool days and tons of play dates with friends! It’s glorious!

Today, I’m giving you the low down on our “pantry”, if that’s what you want call it. When we first looked at this house seven years ago, it was love at first sight. We still absolutely love this house–it’s the perfect size for our family and it has tons of natural light and character! But, on that first tour, I immediately noticed the lack of storage, especially in the kitchen. The cabinets are nice and tall, but there is no pantry. The closest we come is this tall cabinet next to the fridge.

I have struggled with where to store food since we moved in. It’s been a thorn in my side! I had some leftover baskets from my classroom that I used to organize the pantry cabinet the best I could, but the cabinet is so deep that things got lost behind the baskets. Worse, when we needed something from the back of the cabinet, we had to pull everything out from the front. It was super aggravating and was always a huge mess. No matter how clean I tried to keep it, everything ended up just shoved in there.

But, I’m happy to report that I finally found a solution that utilizes the width and depth of the cabinets! I actually redid the pantry cabinet a few months ago, but waited to post this until I had lived with it for a while and made sure the storage solutions held up over time and stayed tidy. I’m so happy to report that it’s all working amazingly! Check it out!

I found these rolling bins at The Container Store and knew they were the perfect solution to this cabinet! They are deep, so utilize the cabinet depth all the way to the back of the cabinet. That alone bought us several inches of accessible storage space! Best of all, they are extremely affordable!!

They have tiny wheels on the bottom, so they glide out like a dream! They also come with dividers that you can adjust and place wherever works best for you! I used the dividers in some baskets and took them all out in other baskets, depending on what my needs were.

The only downside to the bins is that they didn’t have one as wide as the cabinet. However, I found two that perfectly combined to fill the space!

We had been planning for years to add pull out shelves to this cabinet, but it was so dang expensive, it never made it to the top of the budget priority list. These bins function the same as pull out shelves, but at a fraction of the cost. So happy!

The other organizational tool I  found and love is this pan organizer! I have never had a good spot for cookie sheets in this kitchen, especially since getting the double oven, since it doesn’t have a drawer underneath to store pans. This organizer allows me to store my cookie sheets up high and keeps them easily accessible. Such a game changer! I have my cutting boards, cooling racks, and a tall cookie sheet next to it and it’s all been working great!

You might have spied some extra stuff on the very top shelf. I put the grilling stuff up there since Jeremy is the grill master around here and, while I need a step stool to get to that stuff, he’s 6′ tall and can easily grab it.

Speaking of up high storage, while I was at The Container Store, I also spied these little handled baskets on the cheap. They perfectly store all our medicines in the cabinet above the fridge. The handles make them easy for me to grab without needing to pull out the step stool.

In case you’re wondering where all of our snacks are, you may remember that we’ve had a small teal cabinet in the dining room for snacks and cereal. As both kids got older and we moved away from bottles and baby food, that cabinet wasn’t quite big enough anymore. Last year, we upgraded to this beauty from Kirklands and have LOVED it! It adds a lot more storage for food and even gave me three drawers! Love it! I still may frost the glass to disguise the food bags a little, we’ll see. Sneak peek of recent dining room changes in this pic, too! 😉 More on that soon!

Hope you all enjoyed the pantry tour and have a wonderful Fourth!