kitchen pantry ideas for small spaces
hey! it’s abby and i’m so excited to give youa tour of our pantry today! the pantry was one of the first projects weworked on when we moved into our house. we made a couple tweaks since we moved inso i wanted to give you the full tour and to show you how we keep everything nice andneat and organized. before we jump into that, i wanted to remindyou to make sure you subscribe to our channel to get lots of organization inspiration. tip 1. choose shelves that really maximize your storagespace.
when we first moved in to our house, thispantry had wire shelves. i never had wire shelves before so i juststarted putting everything into the pantry like i normally would and my containers werefalling over, things weren't balancing out quite right. i just didn’t love them. they can work in some spaces but they’rejust not my favorite. so, one of the first things we did was pullout the wire shelves and we replaced them with these more solid shelves. it’s actually the algot system from ikea.
i really love these shelves. we’ve used them in a ton of our closets. they’re really sturdy and hold up reallywell. while we had the shelves out, we also putin some pretty, removable wallpaper in the back of the pantry just so when you open thedoors it’s kind of a nice pop of pattern and it’s a nice surprise when you open thepantry and it makes it look really pretty. tip 2. corral like items in bins or baskets. so, a pantry tends to hold a bunch of differenttypes of items.
i needed to find a way to separate them butstill have easy access to everything. so, i just decided to use these simple bins. they’re from target. they carry them just about every season indifferent colors so you should be able to find some that match your house. then i just used them to corral our differenttypes of items that we keep in here. so, the boys school snacks are over here,i have them separated into sweet and salty just because there were a lot of them i thoughtthat would be a fun way to separate them. i have a miscellaneous drawer that’s kindof a catch all.
then, we have different kinds of seasoningslike our big salt containers and our different kind of rubs for steak and things like that. up here we have a baking bin so anytime i’mbaking cookies or anything with the boys i can just pull this out and it has everythingi need. then, the most common question i get askedwhen i show pictures of my pantry is where are your cans? the truth is we don’t use a lot of canswhen it comes to cooking but we have a few and we keep them up here in this bin alongwith a few boxes of items that we have. tip 3 don’t forget the label!
everything kind of has it’s own containerand they’re all labeled. again, these are just gift tags from targetthat i took and i used my silhouette machine to create little labels for everything sowe can tell what goes where. you could also use a label maker, you couldhand write them. you could create them in microsoft word onthe computer. i actually have a tutorial for that on mychannel. so, all sorts of different ways you can labeland separate items so that everything is easy to find. tip 4.
eliminate clutter by using uniform containers. so to give our pantry kind of a more uniformlook and get rid of all the random boxes and containers, i decided to transfer kind ofall my baking stuff like sugar and flour and things like that into these clear containers. these also are from ikea and they’re notvery expensive at all. so we use them like i said for flour and sugarand also things like pasta and rice. again, i used my silhouette machine to cutout some adhesive vinyl and create matching labels for all of them so i know what’sin everything. now, kind of the downside of taking all thisstuff out of their boxes is i lose things
like expiration dates or the number of minutesthat i need to cook the pasta or something like that. so, to solve that problem, i did a couplethings. first, for something like rice or pasta, icut out the little direction sheet and i put it right in there with them so i always knowhow long to cook everything or whatever. it’s right here in there. i also keep a list in the back of the pantryof when everything expires and i do this, i have a little printable, i’ll put it onmy blog and i’ll link to that below so you can grab that printable if you would likeit as well.
i print it out and i use my laminator to laminateit and then i use a dry erase marker to write down each item and the expiration date soi always have a list of when everything expires. if i replace something then it’s reallyeasy to scratch out the old expiration date and put the new one on there. tip 5. use risers to save space and provide easyaccess. since i had these larger clear containers,i thought it would also look nice if i had could have my spices in clear containers aswell. i found these spice jars at world market.
again, super inexpensive. i used the silhouette again to put a vinyllabel on them. you could use a label maker just as easily. and so all of my spices are right here onthis riser in matching little containers. it’s really easy to find them. if you have more spices that i do, you canalso use two. in our last house, i actually used these risersfor our cans as well. so if you use canned goods a lot and you wantto have them more accessible, you can use the risers for that.
it’s just really nice cause you can fitin a lot of things and see what everything is and it doesn’t take up a lot of space. organization hack! use a wine rack to storewater bottles. this is our method for storing our water bottles. i was having a really hard time because ourwater bottles were in one of the cabinets. i felt like they were always falling over. the boys couldn’t reach them when they neededone. so i saw this idea and i thought it was brilliant. these are actually like wine holders and theydo a great job at separating each individual
water bottle. i don’t have the problem with them fallingover. if you were in a smaller kitchen and weretight on space, this might not be the best method because it’s not the smallest wayto store them. it does take up a little bit of space, butwe have loved it for our kitchen. the boys can reach them easily and you canjust slide them into the little slots and they stay nice and organized and nothing isfalling over or losing its lid or anything so, obviously, pantries come in all differentshapes and sizes. what worked perfectly in my pantry might notwork for your pantry at all.
but the same basic principles will apply. tip 1 choose shelves that really maximizeyour storage space. tip 2 corral like items in bins or baskets. tip 4 eliminate clutter by using uniform containers. tip 5 use risers to save space and provideeasy access. remember, the quickest way to get organizedis to start today! so, leave me a comment and let me know whatyou are going to organize next. also, let me know your best pantry organizationtips. and if you’re looking more organizationinspiration be sure to subscribe to our channel
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