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It's officially been a year since I organized my apartment pantry (you can see my original post about my pantry organization here). Out of all the places that I have organized in my apartment, I am most passionate about this space. Which sounds ridiculous, but I really am😆.
I have actually been meaning to write this post for awhile, but it kept getting pushed off. Now that I am doing my spring cleaning marathon, I thought this was the perfect time to clean the pantry up and give a one-year update on everything I love about and everything I don't recommend you doing.
I am clean and organized, but I am not SUPER clean and organized. I live in my spaces and living in my spaces means that sometimes these bins are overflowing, there's expired food, and the bins need a good ole' cleaning to get rid of fallen crumbs.
Here's exactly how the pantry looked one-year after I originally organized it (I didn't touch a THING for these pictures haha)...
She clearly had seen better days...and really, I don't remember it being this bad. BUT, even though it's a little bit of a hot mess, it still worked for us and it worked really well.
Even Ben (mostly) puts stuff where it goes. Also, this is after one year of doing NOTHING. I haven't gone through this at all.
Now that I have purged it and it has ~officially~ been spring cleaned, let's go over some of the things I Iove about it...
If you haven't been able to tell yet, I really love the way this is organized. I organized my fridge and ended up hating it but this pantry, everyone loves (aka Me, Ben, and Shelby love it haha).
This is a very standard apartment pantry. There wasn't a ton of space to work with but also, there was enough space that we could a decent amount in there.
Hands down my favorite thing in there are these white plastic bins. They are so inexpensive and really easy to clean. Luckily, we haven't had any issues with the jute bins, but if there was a spill, those would be a b*tch to clean. Ikea also has those white bins and they're $1 cheaper than Container Store. So, really, that's a pretty minimal price difference for what it usually is.
Another plus to the white bins is that they come in all different sizes. I used the medium size for my pantry and they were $5.99.
The labels have been hit or miss. Overall I do love them, and would recommend but they will randomly fly off. They're not glued in there (nor would I want them to be) but if you saw the above before photos, it does make the pantry look a little janky when half of them have the label and half do not.
I highly recommend keeping your labels extremely broad like "cooking" and "baking" versus "chips" or "noodles". It makes it way easier to find a place for things and keeps it cleaner looking with the broader label.
Get yourself some turn tables for your canned goods!!! It is such a good use of space. You already know that I use turntables everywhere in my apartment, but they are especially good in the pantry.
Best part about this all and something I really considered when buying all of this is that I wanted to make sure that if I was investing in organizing something in my apartment, that I could take those organizers with me to my first home. I know that these will work just as well in a home, as they will here in this apartment.
Day 1 of the spring cleaning month is over and I wish I would have cleaned this dang pantry sooner.
