K(itchen) W(eek)- part 1: The Problem

It's kitchen week and I am thrilled to show you some things we've been up to! I'm going to start with the cabinet storage. It's really hard to store pantry items in cabinets. Some boxes are taller than others. Cans are able to stack, but the wire shelves we had them on made them topple frequently.

Here are some of the before pictures. 

This is my baking cabinet before. I store flour, sugar, spices that I bake with, cake decorating, etc. There is a 3-tiered rack in there to store my spices. The flour and sugar on the second shelf fit really awkwardly.

Here is my main spice cabinet. Once again there is a 3-tired storage that keeps all my spice bottles on the first shelf. The second shelf held hot cocoa and larger containers used to refill some smaller bottles. I do have a spice rack that sits on the counter with the spices I use regularly. The spices in the cabinet are mostly for grilling and to refill the spice rack sitting on the counter. This set up (with the larger refill bottles and the grilling spices mixed together) really annoyed me because if I needed to refill smaller bottles I literally had to take out almost everything out of the cabinet. The top shelf hold empty glass jars for grease (which I pour into them and then freeze to eventually throw away). 

Onto the "pantry storage". There are 3 cabinets that basically all look like this:

I tried to organize it by pasta and stuff here-

Cans and other stuff here-

And then this cabinet is directly above the mircowave. Notice it only has 2 shelves (not 3). This is where we stored cereal, breakfast items, and "extras". 

It was a mess. And I hated finding things in there. And my husband literally would have a stroke everytime he opened a cabinet. And it just wasn't jiving with us.

Our solution? New dry goods storage! I can't even tell you what a difference these have made. We had stored certain things in different containers (coffee, sugar, animal crackers, oatmeal), but the containers didn't match and they just fit in the cabinets really awkwardly.

This was probably the most expensive part of the whole kitchen update... We spent right at $100 for the dry goods storage. It seems like the only way to do this effectively is to have 1 type of storage throughout (not only so they look great, but so they stack on each other too). 

Here's my baking cabinet. I got the 2 plastic containers on the 2nd shelf to corral all our bottles of sprinkles, and the other one to hold cupcake liners, icing, and food coloring. I love how they all fit in these 2 containers with room to grow!

Putting all the cake decorating supplies on the 2nd shelf opened a TON of room for the baking spices on the 1st shelf. 

I didn't have a before of this picture because things were pretty crammed in there. Now on the 1st shelf is flour and sugar (those used to be in the 1st cabinet), and his snacks and cooking salt (along with hot cocoa) are on the 2nd shelf. 

The only major change with the spice cabinet is on the second shelf I added the 2 containers that hold all the extra spices (that I use to refill the spice rack on the counter), and different packets (gravy, chili, etc.). By getting that off the first shelf it's really easy to grab the things I need (without everything falling out like it used to).

This cabinet used to be a hodge podge of pasta. Since I just went shopping (and I tend to buy for the month) it is a little more crammed than normal. The second shelf container holds bread crumbs and the first shelf containers hold rice and pasta. I have a box of lasagna noodles and jumbo shells behind these because I do use them, but not nearly as often. 

The second shelf here hold all our extras- canning stuff, PB&J, etc. The first shelf holds egg noodles for chicken noodle soup and mashed potato mix (that I get at Sam's and split with my mom). Extra oil is behind there. 

This has become our breakfast cabinet. You can see I got a great deal on cereal this month. 2 cereal containers are on the bottom left, slimfast, grapenuts, pancake mix, and oatmeal are on the bottom right. Chips and snacks are on the top right, and extras are on the top left. I had to cram in the extra cereal boxes wherever they would fit :)

So there it is! You might be wondering (from the before pictures) where all the cans and other boxes went... that's tomorrow's post! Also I plan to vinyl what's in each container eventually. We wanted to make sure they worked for these dry goods before jumping the gun and labeling!

(and it's a summer goal marked off!)