Pantry 1, Christina and Rob 0… but not for long. I’d like to think we’re pretty organized people. We hate clutter (you may laugh at that one in a minute), find ourselves vacuuming several times a day, and never leave dishes in the sink, but every other month or so our pantry somehow defeats us. With a new year upon us we thought it was time to tackle it, get things tidy and add a few new healthy snacks to our rotation while we were at it. We decided to make it our joint resolution this year. Doing it together, we’re less likely to forget or give up in a few weeks!  Marshalls came to the rescue with high-quality food storage, natural and gourmet food and everything in between. I like that Marshalls has a fresh selection of products because every trip there is like a little surprise.

The before. Need we say more? The bulky canisters, snacks thrown on top of each other, messy spices. It left a lot to be desired. When we redid the kitchen we just refaced the cabinets. We didn’t get into any fancy drawers or custom shelving, and for the very photo above I wish we had. The shelves are few and there’s a lot of wasted space, but it’s what we’re currently working with and until we decide to tackle more customization, here’s what we did to get tidy.

After sitting on the kitchen floor wondering what I got myself into I decided to take everything out of the pantry and start fresh…see what we were working with.

DITCH THE CEREAL BOXES + RICE BAGS
These containers are probably one of my favorite things. If I was Julie Andrews these containers would be right up there with brown paper packages tied up in string. Just sayin’. We stocked up on these at Marshalls, all shapes and sizes. Getting rid of any boxes or packages that didn’t have a resealable top and adding the contents into these little beauties was so satisfying. Rice, almonds, bread crumbs, they all went in one of these!

SPICES ORGANIZATION
With this little half shelf we were able to get the best out of the few shelves we do have and store some extra coffee beans and soup mixes under the spices. For spice jars we picked up these pretty copper ones and I think they make our dried basil, cinnamon, and bay leaves extra fancy.

So not overwhelmed, by the state of the pantry….nope, no way. Cool as a cucumber. 😉

STORAGE BINS + HEALTHY EATING
Getting close! We used a few of those long storage bins on the right for snacks, to-go bars, and such. They were pretty deep and are doing the trick for our drawer-less pantry. The amount of nuts, granola, edamame and pumpkin seeds we’ve been going through in this house is crazayyyy, so I was excited to find these snacks at Marshalls. After all the holiday sweets we’re trying to be smart with our  eating. We stocked up on so many healthy items like quinoa, organic energy bars and avocado oil. Having our pantry fully stocked with these items like this makes it so much easier to eat healthy.You can’t separate us from our pasta and bagels though, nope.

CATEGORIZE
We divided each section of the pantry into sections by category. Top shelf: cereals, pastas, snacks, etc. Middle shelf: all about baking…vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, flour, cookie mixes, etc. We also added the spices, tea and coffee here as well. Bottom shelf: glass and plastic storage containers, parchment paper, etc.

So it isn’t the Mona Lisa, but it is definitely more organized and I don’t have heart palpitations every time I open the pantry now, so that’s a step. I think next we may add a few more of those temporary shelves and spend some time with the label maker to make things extra pretty. We’ll see. For now, we’re just happy we know where everything is and it’s progress, which will help us stay committed to getting our pantry organized and continue to eat healthy together.

How are you getting on track for the new year?

*This post was made in partnership with Marshalls. As always all thoughts and opinions are our own.