I had been planning on doing this project for a while and finally decided to spend an afternoon actually DOING it and I’m very happy with the outcome. Now, everything is neat. organized and my dry goods and cans are easy to find.
This is what my pantry looked like before:
Dry goods and can pantry BEFORE
And this what my spice/baking cabinet looked like before:
Spice/Baking Cabinet BEFORE
Obviously, my cabinets need some organizing! It was often a pain trying to find something I needed and I had to sort through stuff and sometimes (with the case of the dry goods we buy in bulk), I’d have to wonder what it was…..
This project took some forethought, as I recycled glass jars saved over many months to store goods in. My mom and mother-in-law saved most of them for me, as I do not purchase many foods that are pre-packaged. Most of the food that my husband and I buy is fresh and make most things from scratch, therefore, I really don’t have many jars to re-use. Thankfully, my moms do!
I originally started saving jars for storage in my sewing studio, but as time went on and my recycled jar collection grew (as did my bulk foods in ziploc bags….), I thought of another way to re-use these jars. I had to do a lot of jar soaking to get labels off and my husband did a lot of scrubbing with Goo Gone. I also had to wash and re-wash a lot of jars as scents would linger and I didn’t really want my rice smelling like pickles….
I used my Brother P-Touch labelmaker to identify our goods, which is probably the best tool that I’ve ever bought. I’ve seen people use fancy labels for this project that really look awesome, but I like my labelmaker. 🙂
Here are the after photos!
Pantry after:
Dry Goods/Can Pantry AFTER
Spice/Baking Cabinet after:
Spice/Baking Cabinet AFTER
We buy a lot of items in bulk, so jars are much needed to store our dry goods. You may also notice that we don’t have many cans — that’s due to the fact that we rarely every buy anything that is canned. Also, I plan on filling up that space with home canned veggies this fall.
I find big pickle jars and pasta jars to be the best jars to store goods in. I also plan on finding (or buying) some jars/bins tall enough for spaghetti and linguine.
I can also see what I’m running low on so I can replace it. This looks soooooo much better than keeping items in plastic bags. It also keeps any bugs that may come around OUT!!! Just make sure that your jars are very well dried out as you don’t want any moisture in with dry goods.
I found that small jam jars are great for spices. I also saved some old plastic spice jars and washed, de-labeled and re-used them as well. This makes me want to try some of the bulk spices that they have at our local Sunflower/Sprouts market as I actually have something to store them in that’s better than a plastic bag.
It’s sooooo nice to have my chile powders in jars. It makes it so nice when I’m cooking to open a jar rather than a plastic bag. My husband just brought me back a bunch of chile powders from New Mexico, so now they have a place in my cabinet and are easy to find. And YES, I like cumin! Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t….. so I have to keep the amounts small unless it’s in a Middle Eastern or Indian dish where there are a lot of spices mixed with it.
I hope this offers some inspiration to anyone wanted to organize their cabinets. Next up, I’ll be organizing our snack cabinets. 🙂
