The pantry saga continues….
So we doubled down on our pantry organization during our forced lockdown on Saturday and Sunday - due to living in the path of a snow cyclone bomb (yeesh, who comes up with these terms??) , and following our ‘braving of the markets’ on Friday when everyone was in the store clearing the shelves of bread and milk. WHY does snow seem to inspire people to hoard bread and milk specifically?? It’s not like there aren’t other, more attractive options to hoard…like chocolate…and wine!
We did indeed need milk - because in the normal course of things, this is the day the fresh milk arrives at the farm stand and thus the day we return the old bottles and get new ones…and I do NOT like to be without milk for tea, and most certainly not when I am snowed in and may lose power!
The great news is, we did not lose power. The less great news is, we got a LOT of snow and our roof is now sporting these spectacular stalactite/stalagmite icicles which means a pending ice dam is likely. And which also means I will be on a ladder chiseling these babies off the roof before they start to melt and create a very much unplanned “indoor water feature”🙄. Which we have had before, almost exactly a year ago.
Massive icicles following the snow cyclone bomb storm that swept through here last weekend
Why do I live here again??
Anyway, the pantry project got well under way this week. And expanded to the freezer as well.
In the wonderful world of food storage, the freezer and refrigerator are just pantry space with specific temperatures, so we decided to treat them as such.
Pantry Organization
Our closet pantry progress has been huge, but it still needs a bit of tweaking and it isn’t Pinterest pretty. Yet. It’s a WORKING pantry y’all, not a photo styled one at this point. And the door situation has not yet been solved.
one of the sets of pantry containers unpacked and ready for filling!
I do love these containers though! Enough that I bought a total of 3 sets so far! I love being able to see what we have and exactly how much is left. Anything that doesn’t fit is relegated to these airtight sealed labeled bins in the mudroom, which are the first stop to replenish before adding to the shopping list.
Large airtight bins for pantry overflow storage
We have 3 full overflow containers labeled “baking” and 1 large bin labeled “tea”. Which pretty much sums up our household priorities, right there! There is also one for rice/beans/grains/pasta and one for dried fruits/nuts/snacks. Fully sealed boxes can fit on top.
The tallest containers in the pantry only fit on one of the most accessible shelves, so I need my favorite handyman to move one of the shelves so I can organize them with a bit more flexibility.
I also love that these stack so neatly.
And, even though I totally understand how math and volume works, it was still remarkable to see that this monster round container of rice (which was full) fit perfectly into the tallest container. Squared containers are MUCH more efficient than round ones.
That round container was FULL and it all fit in the skinny rectangular container!
I did keep our round ones for larger bulkier items like chips.
writing the chalkboard labels for the pantry
Our containers came with these pretty chalkboard labels and chalk markers. There were WAY more labels than containers, presumably so you can change them, but they wipe off really nicely with a damp cloth if you need to change the contents anyway.
cooking directions to affix to the pantry containers
And we also made labels with the cooking instructions to tape to the back of the rice and oatmeal that we use frequently so no one has to look it up every time.
Filling containers and lining them up on the shelves is oddly satisfying!
We attempted to add a rack of wire baskets to the door for potatoes and onions. After acquiring an engineering degree to assemble them from instructions that would make IKEA weep, it was an epic fail. The rack of baskets we ordered did not have a full size listed and was way too huge to work for us without interfering with the rolling cart in the middle. We could have one or the other but not both.
I’m quite attached to the rolling cart, so the door rack went back. I ended up using the drawers of the cart for the potatoes and onions since the beans and rice and legumes all got promoted to shelves, and it works beautifully!
Now I’m on the hunt for a different kind of door basket to store the canned goods and bottles since I’d like a single layer of those so we can find everything easily. It still needs to be short enough to fit above the cart as there is ZERO room between it and the door!
Freezer Organization
The freezer got tackled on Sunday. I had organized it a few years ago into bins that pull out like drawers - one of each type of food, but they were overflowing and open bags of half used frozen foods are awkward. Bagged goods in general are awkward to store and hard to determine how much is inside.
On a side note, nuts will keep pretty much indefinitely stored in the freezer. The vintage almonds circa 2002 I mentioned in the first pantry post STILL hadn’t gotten rancid - although I did feed them to the wildlife all the same. IDK, having food from at least the same decade just seems prudent?!
I like having containers of nuts so I can see exactly how much I have left of anything. And they stand a much better chance of inspiring some wonderful baked goods if I can see them!
A freezer is just a pantry…only colder!
We offloaded all the frozen veggies into these wonder containers too. And now we can see what we have and it is easy to grab and pour into our weeknight gourmet concoctions. While I adore fresh vegetables, frozen is just as nutritious and often more so than fresh stuff that traveled across a continent to get to you.
If you can’t buy it locally (and our growing season here is painfully short!), then frozen is a good alternative. I freeze fresh veg purchased in season occasionally anyway….frozen containers of leftover roasted corn kernels and sliced scallions are fairly common in our house!
I’ve started on the backup freezer organization as well, but that one needs a bit more thought. It’s where any extras of the frozen foods go to live along with the frozen convenience/snack foods like dumplings and mozzarella sticks. Also, the pile of dead bananas we ALWAYS keep on hand for baking our favorite banana cake, banana bread, and banana squares with browned butter frosting…yum..we may need to make some of those tonight…
Storage Containers
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For those of you who need to know - the containers I used are linked below (click on image for link). I like that they don’t have bulky lids that take up extra space and that the lids are the same for all the containers so no games of “match the tops and bottoms” like used to be a common occurrence in the Tupperware drawer before we streamlined with these deli and bento containers for leftovers.
I have some more work to do. I want to prettify the pantry with a fun wall color and maybe a fun door color too! So I’ll be back with one more pantry/food storage post in this series where I’ll show you the finished product and spill (haha) on what we did with the crazy amounts of spices and loose tea we seem to own!
Until then, happy organizing!
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