5 March 2013

How I organise my pantry

I did a post like this when we lived in our last house and thought I'd do another one now that we've moved and have a different pantry. My systems are similar but I have made some changes, and the shelf space in our current pantry is a little different.

You can click on the previous post for more information about how I labelled the baskets and containers, for a proper look at the labels, and for more information about the Cuisine Queen containers I use.

The pantry is in the corner between the fridge and the sink. It has a folding door.

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I'll take you shelf by shelf. The top shelf is where I store my cake stands, vase, jug my granny gave me, trifle bowl, and a couple of random bottles. The yellow plastic basket holds spare appliance parts. I need a chair to access this shelf (which makes it Grade C real estate):

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Next shelf down. I can reach this shelf without a chair.

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This is what the Baking basket contains. I used a paint pen to mark the tops of the flavourings with a letter so I know which is which (S = strawberry, O = orange, etc):

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In the corner is a plastic bowl containing a seldom-used Pampered Chef decorator and my potato ricer. The basket on the left contains my electric knife:

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Next shelf down:

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On the left is a basket for hot drinks.

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This is what the hot drinks basket contains. I plan to put all of the teabags and coffee into jam jars (like the peppermint tea) as they become available:

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Removing the basket, you'll see all of the rice containers:

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Behind the rice containers are seldom-used items in glass jars:

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I can see the labels for these jars through the rice containers so if I do want, for example, lentils, I just pull out the hot drinks basket, move the rice container in front of the jar I want and grab the jar.

Next shelf down. On the right you can see my Weight Watchers quick notes (which you can read more about and download here):

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The containers on the shelf I've just showed you are two deep. Here is the second row:

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Next shelf down. Yes, we keep our eggs out of the fridge here (as well as in the UK and South Africa) and they are sold unrefrigerated in the supermarket. Keeping them in the fridge seems to be an American thing. In the cereal basket we usually just remove the plastic bag from the cereal box, put a bag clip on it and put it into the basket. The bags are usually slightly translucent so you can see the contents, or else the cereal comes in a printed bag like the one you can see. However, we recently had some cereal that came in a foil bag so you couldn't see the contents - I put it into a plastic container so we could see what it was, so that's what you see in the basket in this photo.

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I used a plate-stacking rack to hold my digital scales and Weight Watchers food scales:

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Did you see that cute Food Fight tin? It was a gift from my friend Taryn (she knows me so well!) In it I stash coins and $5 notes so that I always have money for the kids' pocket money and school requests (as you can see, we're running low). They frequently have Sausage Sizzles at school and it's handy to have dollar coins for that. I also stash chocolate in there for emergencies (my own, not the kids').

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Next shelf down.

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The packets stored in the far right corner are things like drink sachets and instant soup. The jars in the basket hold chicken and beef stock cubes, gravy powder, and cornflour.

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Bottom shelf.

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I hope that was interesting and / or helpful! If you have any questions please leave them below and I'll answer them as soon as I can.


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