Pantry for Pennies: Part 1

I was recently wowed and inspired by this post on my favorite organizing blog, iheartorganizing. It immediately motivated me to tackle my long overdue organizational pantry project.

We have an unused hall closet that has been collecting cobwebs since the day we moved in almost 2 years ago. When we purchased our house it had no central heat and we had to have duct work ran. Our house layout is kind of strange and the only way they could connect the pipes between floors was to put a big duct right through the hall closet, making it completely dysfunctional for hanging anything. But perfect for shelves, which are definitely lacking in the kitchen department here at the Greene house.

Unfortunately, this project got pushed to the back burner as things often do with a baby in the house. I finally decided it was time to tackle it and with new motivation: to make it GREEN(E|). My goal was to buy as little as possible for the pantry. This of course meant I had to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle things we already had and to ignore every impulse telling me to go to the Container Store for pretty new organizers.

The first step was the shelves themselves. Husband found some scrap plywood in the garage, cut it to size, painted it white and viola! Instant shelves!

The next order of business: deciding how to organize the small space to utilize it to its fullest potential. After scouring pinterest I finally decided I needed pullouts in a major way! The closet is pretty deep and there was no way I'd be able to reach the back without them. This is where I ran into a problem. I didn't have any laying around and couldn't find any used ones anywhere. So this ended up being the one pantry splurge, but I rationalized it as a wise investment since they would be used for years and years to come and the metal could eventually be recycled.

Next, I scrounged up a few baskets and labels around the house and went to town collecting containers at our local thrift store. I am amazed at how many organizational doo-dads you can find at these places! I scored a giant set of 15 tupperware brand thin profile containers for $7. Yep, you heard that right. I looked them up on the tupperware website when I got home and they retail for $10-15 each! I also found lots of mason jars, pasta jars and can organizers. In all I think I spent less than $25.

After the painstaking process of sorting through our existing pantry items I got to put it all together, complete with an over-the-door closet shoe rack which is proving to be SO useful and handy! Of course I couldn't just stop with the pantry closet and had to spiff up our existing cupboard as well. The last step was to slap on some chalk board paint which I had from a previous project, and add a menu board and shopping list. Then I got to stand back and marvel at my accomplishment, which of course is the best part aside from the realization that the whole thing cost less than $75! Green and budget-friendly, my favorite pairing.

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