A reorganized pantry!

This past August, I organized our pantry.  And that worked well for a while.  But then it slowly started becoming more and more chaotic.  The main culprit was the craft center.  It just would never stay organized, and Cambria would get into it constantly without permission.  I cannot even count how many times I’d find her with paint everywhere.  So, that had to change.  It was getting so bad that I just never wanted to let the kids craft because of the messes Bri would make when she didn’t have permission!  I knew I wanted to keep the dresser in there because it’s really functional.  I just had to change up the arrangement. 

I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to do this for several weeks now.  I was waiting for my can organizers I ordered to finally arrive before I started.  Then it only took me about another 2 weeks after they did come to actually complete this project.    What I did was I moved all the craft supplies to the top shelf in the pantry.  They are still very easily accessible and visible (so they’re not out of sight, out of mind, never getting used!), but the catch is that they are only accessible by an adult!  That freed up 4 drawers in the craft center.  The top one is for our office supplies (pens, hole punch, stamps, etc.), and I knew that had to stay.  Then I realized I could put the kids’ board games into the drawers and free up a shelf in our kitchen/dining area.  The games were stored on the bottom shelf, and the printer was stored on the shelf right above that.  So I took all the games out of the cupboard, and I took most of them out of their boxes and put them into Ziploc bags.  Some of them were too big and had to stay in the boxes, but I was able to put all but 5 into bags.  This allowed me to fit something like 15-20 games (not to mention a lot of puzzles, dominoes, etc.) into 2 of the dresser drawers.  Then I took the printer out of that cupboard and put it on top of the craft center so it’s right with all the office supplies.  Now I have an entire cupboard completely empty and have no clue what to put in there!  I know, poor me, having too much storage space….  

I also moved Cambria’s easel out of her room and into the pantry.  This actually happened by accident.  I needed to keep her busy while I worked, so I decided to bring it in and let her draw/color/paint so she wouldn’t go crazy.  Then I realized I LOVED having it in there!  It’s right by all the craft supplies, so it will get used a lot more.  It’s not on carpet any more, so clean up will be way easier.  And it frees up a lot of very valuable space in her room.  Why didn’t I think of this before?! 

I went to Walmart and got 4 tupperware bins that are the perfect size to hold construction paper, coloring books, etc.  They were something like $4.75 a piece.  Then I went to the dollar store and got 3 little baskets.  I put colored pencils in 1 basket, crayons in another, and glue in another, simply because those things are used very frequently, and I didn’t want to have to go digging through a bin to find them every day.  This brings my grand total to about $63 for the whole transformation (that includes the 12 can organizers I got).  All the other baskets and containers I already had on hand.

So, here are the pictures!  The white basket on top of the dresser holds our computer paper.  The yellow bins on the shelves hold dessert stuff (pudding, jello, cake mixes) and seasoning packets (fajita, etc.).  The white tub previously held our bread, but now it holds Ramen noodles.  The yellow bin sitting on the easel contains the alphabet magnets that came with the easel and also chalk for the chalkboard side.  Not only is it way more organized, but I also have basically the entire bottom shelf completely empty now!  There are only 3 things stored there – a smaller container of cat food for easier access, soy sauce, and apple juice. 

It took me about 2.5 hours to finish, but it makes me so happy!!  I feel like I can breathe when I walk in there!