Four week "wait no more" organizing challenge: Week two: the pantry

We have a small kitchen, but a wonderful butler's pantry right off the kitchen. It has tons of storage  am space, and one corner of it actually functions as a coat closet. There are lost of great shelves and tons of storage space. My eventual plans are to overhall the space by painting or wallpapering the space, adding shelf liner, and adding a cute door instead of the builder grade interior door. I'd also like to buy more matching baskets so the pantry will have a more streamlined look, but this will be done as the budget allows. I have plenty of other projects in front of this one, so I am not sure when this will happen.

We had this pantry beautifully organized last summer. You can read about that here. There truly was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. But then we got lazy. Really lazy. There were things hanging out of the baskets, and it truly was a giant pain.

First of all, let me apologize for the poor picture quality. There is no natural light in here, and it's a long narrow room. It's hard to capture a good shot.

Just look at all that mess hanging out of those baskets. Look at those completely empty baskets taking up space. Look at all that stuff in the floor! 

This side actually stayed organized.
\I got to work. I donated the food processor that is huge, takes up a ton of space, and we've used once in four years. I removed the book bag that hasn't moved from the pantry since October. The basket system for daily menu items was a good idea, but we never used it and it took up a whole shelf.



I took all the individually wrapped food items out of their cardboard boxes so they'd fit into the baskets better.  I moved my cookbooks to a more accessible shelf. I put the unsightly appliances on the bottom shelf and moved them out of eye level. I purchased inexpensive wood crates and moved the buy-in-bulk items to the crates and set them on the floor below the shelves.





I also utilized some glass canisters to store our lemonade mix and our tea bags.

Now, my pretty milk glass and serveware fit nicely on the top shelf.

I can't wait to completely overhall this pantry, but I think for now, the functionality and organization has definitely improved. This will make it so much easier to find things in our pantry, which is a plus!