Doesn’t everyone love to organize these days? It’s such a trendy thing to do now, and I’m so glad that there is a WIDE variety of container options because of that.

I’ve always wanted to have a beautiful and well organized pantry, but to be honest, it’s not cheap! The containers really feel like an investment, but they are so worth it in the end. Your life is so much easier, and my kids love knowing which bin is theirs to grab snacks from. Well…Luca knows, Nico is still too young and just throws stuff around in there!

During quarantine, we were stuck in our house so much, just staring at the same 4 walls. The pantry was really starting to bug me. I decided to do some searching and sourcing for storage containers and find the best deals I could. Previously, I bought a few large Kallax containers from Ikea, but definitely not enough for the whole pantry. I would have gone back to them first, but they were closed at the time.

While I love the Container Store, the prices can sometimes be a little higher than I am willing to pay. But I always make sure to compare prices to them with other similar options from Homegoods, Target or Amazon.

*Quick note about HomeGoods. The only bad thing about shopping there for these bigger projects, is them possibly not having everything you need that matches. If you’re going to redo the whole thing at once, it’s nice to have styles or brands that match.

For this project, I would get the most for my money from Amazon. Since I already had the white plastic bins from Ikea, I wanted to stick with white and clear acrylic only. Personally, I don’t love wicker baskets in a pantry. You’re dealing with food and the thought of bugs hiding in the baskets really grosses me out. Plastic containers you can easily clean with soap and water and not have to replace as often.

So there are two ways to go about organizing your pantry:

Pulling everything out and grouping everything into categories.

*This will help you see what size containers you need and exactly how many.

2. You can also just buy a bunch of stuff and wing it! That’s what I did! ;)

I knew that I could easily return things that didn’t work or fit, or I could easily use those pieces in other areas of the house. Like our bathrooms!

Thankfully, I used everything I bought and actually ended up buy a few more pieces of the styles I needed extras of.

Let’s start with the before pictures…

before

So you can see the large white Kallax bins from Ikea randomly scattered around the pantry. Overall, I had things in categories on each shelf, for the most part. But it just looked messy and never stayed organized because nothing really had it’s own place. It’s crazy how bins and containers can make a HUGE difference. Even if you can’t keep the stuff in the bins always organized, the overall look and feel of the pantry will be clean.

After

I did a mix of white and clear containers, which I know isn’t everyones preference to have both. But they each serve their purpose for us, in our pantry. The stacked containers are always nice to have clear so you can see what is in the bottom containers. Now, I know what you’re going to say…just use labels! Labels look cute but they aren’t practical for everyone, and definitely not for us. I know myself and I know I wouldn’t be changing those labels as often as I may change what’s in the containers. So, for me, they are functional.

I also like clear containers for things I know I can keep organized easily, but still want to see what’s in them. Like the pouches, baby food and snack bars.

The white containers are great for “categories” that have more than one item in them.

“Kids snacks/crackers”

“Bread/tortillas”

“Breakfast condiments: peanut butter, syrup, etc”

Those things all have random shapes and sizes and can be grouped together in one bin that you can pull out easily when you need them.

Let’s talk airtight containers! I bought a few of the OXO brand containers years ago, and I love them, but I DON’T love the price. I found this amazing set which gives you more at an amazing price. They work just as well and they look similar to the OXO containers so I didn’t have to replace those. We use these containers for cereal, oatmeal, sugars, salt, flour and some of the kids snacks. I actually DO have some of these labeled, just so I don’t accidentally use salt when I need sugar! ;)

As far as the canned food goes, I decided to just stack them on top of each other but obviously put them in categories. The can risers are great if you only have a few cans and want to see them all. But if you have a lot of cans, those risers just take up too much space and don’t make sense. There is the metal rack option that rolls your cans forward, and that one I liked. However, with the height of our shelves, it made the must sense for us to just stack them alone.

I left the bottom, side shelves for our bigger kitchen items like the crock pot and ninja mixer.