Solving The Walk-In Pantry Puzzle

by shawnachilders

I was excited to start my day with a pantry organize! I knew this walk-in pantry was going to be a big job and my client got a jump on the work of clearing a lot of the pantry before I got there. So when I arrived I knew we’d better get busy! My client had admitted to being overwhelmed and we needed to find the perfect equation to not only get everything back into the pantry but also make it WORK! The items from the pantry were also on the kitchen counter….

And a side table between the kitchen and dining room…

To start solving the walk-in pantry puzzle, I tackled what was still in the pantry first. There was a pretty good mix of dishes, serving items and food. To the left there were mostly pans, cookbooks and a variety of dishes but there was also some food items mixed in helter, skelter.

I turned my attention to gathering all the dishes and cookbooks and shifting them to the left side. I also took into consideration how often items were used and worked to get smaller items in the corners so they would be easier to remove.

I loved being able to add a cute cream and sugar dish with matching salt and pepper shakers in front of the cookbooks! Although it’s hard to tell, the shelf above that are all of the client’s graters/choppers/slicer/dicer type items with knives tucked in on the far left. There was enough room to add a cookie press (or three) on the right side of that shelf as well. Normally when there are duplicate items we encourage our clients to pick the favorite and donate the rest. In this case all three cookie presses were used at the same time for holiday family cookie baking days! So they were allowed to stay!! 🙂 For the other shelves it was a matter of finding like items and arranging them in the best possible stacking scenarios.

Then it was on the right side of the pantry! This is where most of the food items had started and I worked to solidify them ALL going there.

Expiration dates were checked and a lot of them were discarded due to expired dates. Then flours, sugars, beans, pastas, cereals and snacks were added to containers that the client had purchases before our session. My label maker had smoke flying off of it as I made sure labels landed on items not easily identified by sight! 🙂 We also condensed and used every bit of the wire shelving on the wall.

Then for the last area, front and center when you walked in the pantry. This space had shelves and drawers. a lovely thing!

Several of the big items fit in this section well, so they got to stay where they were while excess things were cleared away. Coffee, cereal and snacks fit nicely onto the shelves above. Paper towels worked wonderfully in one of the drawers.