Pantrys Need Love, too!

This is from our old residence when we organized our upstairs Linen Closet-turned-Food Pantry; back in March 2009.

Our main problem: Our kids help us fill this closet and a very busy household.
Our incentive: We were starting a 10-day NO EATING OUT or SHOPPING.

Well, we got the pantry organized tonight. Thanks to my great hubby, Mr. Man!

Some befores:

This is just right before we got started in reinforcing some shelves... We had to take stuff out as you can see...

This is my "oh-so" gorgeous hubby making sure those shelves will stay put. There he is testing out the new layout... Almost done!


And the afters! Doesn't my pantry look ready for a 10-day raid? Mr. Man did such a great job, "thank you, Mahal!"
Above is the left side where we put the cans and heavy stuff, and below is the right side where the lighter stuff now resides! And look, an empty container! Yay!

One of our children have many food allergies and maintaining a strict "hide the nuts" policy have to start in this closet for his safety. Making each inventory more visible and accessible, our son can help grab stuff out without any danger of being exposed to any nuts. Thank goodness he's not "nuts dust" allergic-purely skin contact and direct ingestion.
I'm off to tweak the menu for the week as we found a lot of goodies we'd rather eat! We're off to a good start with our family project!

NOW TO THE PRESENT...

As you can see in the pictures, the pantry is full of things we eat and use. It housed both our Food Storage, Everyday Stock and Non-Food Items. Since it was the only closet for all of our needs, we decided to be really organized about the space.

We partitioned using FREQUENCY, PURPOSE, STORAGE, TEMPERATURE SENSITIVITY. (it is upstairs so naturally, it is a bit warmer). Food Storage on the bottom and back shelves, Everyday Stock in middle shelves while non-food items are up top since we have our children help us bring stuff up and down this closet.

So, we... PONDERED about our needs and space. Then we REDESIGNED to have easier ACCESS for even two people. We no longer had to YANK what we needed at the higher shelves since we place a step stool inside and since we were set on a 10-day shopping hiatus, this new setup, made our experience SIMPLE and SUCCESSFUL!

Good luck to your own organization projects!