Cabinet Crisis!

My "pantry" cabinet has been overwhelming me for a while.  It was really, really bad.  Observe:

Something had to happen.  And it had to happen today.  I went online and browsed "help me organize my kitchen cabinets."  Talk about useless information.  Seriously.  The most helpful thing I found was a link to the ContainerStore.com.  A delightful place, I might add.

I guess this post will be pretty close to useless, but I can at least tell you how I approached it, which was in my normal bulldozer manner.

First of all, I cleared out the bottom 2 cabinets and spread it out on the counter, loosely grouping it by sections: cans, seasonings, pasta, baking stuff, etc.

By the way, I also wanted to attack the top 2 shelves, but as I knew everything up there was baking related, I figured I would tackle that after handling all the miscellaneous crap.

By the way x2, this is an excellent time to check the expiration date of all your items.  Because you wouldn't want to eat things that expired back in 2006.  *ahem*  I might also add that it is a fantastic thing to discard these items with abandon.  (Though I emptied most of them so I could recycle the containers, which was sort of a kill-joy.)

After oogling the containerstore.com and making an extensive shopping cart and knowing full well that Cherry Hill was way too far away, I hauled kiddo and me to BedBath&Beyond and got some ghetto organizers.  These white shelves were only $5 each, and not a bit straight.

I should add that I wanted to get a lot of baking items onto the 2nd shelf.  Lots of sites say to put what you use most often within easy reach, and yes, good plan.  I never used to bake much, so everything on the 3rd shelf made sense.  That started to get old once I got into baking.

So with that in mind, I really strived to pack everything else in.  I guess it still looks cluttered, but at least I can see everything in there.  I wanted a can organizer, but the one from BB&B was too long.  I am pretty light on canned stuff at the moment... usually I have canned tomatoes and more soups.  So I hope I can get them in without it getting crazy in there.

OH YEAH, you should really measure your cabinet space.  You'll want to know things like that before buying organizers.  Here are my devastatingly adorable sketches & notes:

Now I have the bottom 2 shelves filled in.  I have migrated much of the smaller frequently-used baking items to the second shelf.  Yay!

Now you can be all kinds of noosey about my stuff.  I have quite a few boxes of pasta.  I bet if I buy 2-3 of those taller OXO containers, I can get all that pasta in and have it look much nicer.  Also, those bags of dried beans have been sentenced.  I went through a <brief> phase where I was trying to be extra frugal.  As it turns out, I'll never soak beans and then cook them, so buying bags of them was not much of a money-saver.  I think I was also sucked into the allure of nice, glorious glass canisters filled with various dried goods.  Like in Martha Stewart magazine.  And then I am reminded how expensive those glass canisters are.  /whine.

That one can of soup has been in my cabinet forever.  I guess I didn't check that expiration date.  No one seems to want it.  And by no one, I mean Justin, because I certainly won't eat it.  Nor would I subject Gretchen to those creepy lumps of white bubbly meat.  *shiver*

Here's the final product:

Weird things that I rarely (never) use are at the very top- conveniently stacked in mini-load pans that were up there.  How about that.  Things like cupcake liners, icings, fancy sugars, food dye, jello egg molds.  Listen- I may never make jello eggs, but I will ALWAYS HAVE THE MOLDS JUST IN CASE.  Because I love them.  And jello egg jigglers are some of the creepiest things on earth.

"Fancy" or unusual baking items went to the back of the third shelf- molasses, corn syrup, rose water, canned pumpkin, etc.  The big things went in front.  I would like holders for my flour and sugar one day.  I also have whole wheat flour, but that is living in the fridge.  I think I remember reading that it can go rancid.

So looking at the final picture, I feel like it should have looked fancier, but at least I now know exactly what I have (and what I need).  I am thinking of sticking a little pad of paper on the inside of the cabinet door so I can jot down missing things as they occur to me.  Maybe SOME people have no problem remembering things to buy, or even remembering them long enough to walk across the kitchen and write them on the whiteboard, but I don't know anyone like that.