Organization

Surprise, I am a planner, and I like to organize everything. I sometimes, okay a lot of the time can't keep it organized but would like to share my best laid plans with all you follow throughers out there. This week I am organizing my pantry (which I have been working on for a while now but got put on the back burner while I was working on finally graduating college). Here is my "before" picture that I took today.

Step 1: Size up the job

 I got the yellow bins at the dollar store, but didn't want to buy as many as I needed that day and thought I would go back for them, problem is they sold out in two days and NEVER got them again. When I ran out of those convenient little bins, I started to put things in the quart size canning jars, which I must admit I really like.

Steps to an organized pantry with pictures:

Step 3: Place food in labeled containers

1. Size up the job
2. Take everything out
3. Put things in your desired storage containers (I like to buy things like soy protein isolate powder, almond meal, and oats in bulk so they have to be poured out of the bags if I have any hope of keeping track of them)
4. Organize your food goods into zones, some of my categories are veggies, baking, grains, breakfast, snacks, and food storage.
5. Starting at the eye level shelf, pick the zone you most often use and start putting things back, move down one shelf, then up one shelf until you are putting your least used items on the top and bottom shelves.

6. Affix the DIY print at home labels to the shelves, bins, and jars to keep things from migrating.

Step 4: Create food zones, Step 6: label shelves

I have to confess that I'm not quite done. I would like to buy some half gallon and gallon size canning jars to use for pastas, cereals, and the like but can't bring myself to make the purchase while I am working so hard on my family budget. Nonetheless, here is my end product.

Semi-finished product

                                          Resources I used are:
Labels- I didn't use these ones because I was out of color inc, but LOVED them
Labels- The ones I used
Jars- Use an assortment of glass canning jars (I just love the country feel of them)
Bins- I got mine at Dollar Tree, but since they have been discontinued, here is something similar
I also browsed several blogs, and magazine websites for zone ideas.