It’s a great idea to get rid of packaging and put your food directly in air-tight food storage containers to save room in your kitchen! Take it a step further and label your storage containers for beautiful and organized cabinets or pantry shelves!
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Organize Your Kitchen
It’s AHH-MAZING what a little decluttering can do for your kitchen and your soul! I’ve been working hard on my “Hot-Mess House Challenge,” and my kitchen was next on my list! (You can read more about my “Hot-Mess House Challenge” HERE!) I have a whole house to organize and two little kids, so this process is more of a marathon, not a sprint. I want to do things right, so that I continue to stay organized after I’ve completed each room. Make sure you check out the first post in my organizational challenge, “How to Organize a Small Linen Closet!”
The kitchen, along with my linen closet, and my playroom, are probably the place where I have the most clutter. I still have a fair amount of clutter other places, but these take the cake. A few years ago, we had our kitchen remodeled on the DIY Network TV show, “Good, Better, Best!” It was such a cool experience and you can read all about it in my post, “My Experience on a DIY Network Reality TV Show!”
We got rid of a few things when transferring things from our old cabinets to our new cabinets, but somehow we still had a ridiculous amount of stuff in our cabinets! We don’t have a pantry, so we have to be smart with what we put in our cabinets. Well, we have to be smart now, because we just threw everything in our old cabinets! I’m embarrassed to tell you the expiration date on some of the food I threw away, but let’s just say it was older than my son!
Once starting my “Hot-Mess House Challenge,” I knew that I wanted to start using storage containers for food in my kitchen. A friend of mine who is a home organizer, suggested this at the start of the new year when I did a four-part series: The Ultimate Guide to Staying Organized! This is a great way to get some motivation!
Kitchen Food Storage Containers
***(The Container Store is having a 25% off sale for their favorite storage containers! Target is also having a sale, $10 off $50 spent or $25 off $100 spent!)***
Air-Tight Food Storage Containers
My kitchen cabinets are not that deep. At 11 inches deep, I guess they are average, but it isn’t very much room! I found several food storage containers that would work for the depth, but not for the height. You can adjust our shelves, but number one, I like the height where they are currently, and number two, they are a pain in the arse to change!
After a lot of searching, I finally found some that were the perfect height at Target! (See below.) The excitement that comes from finding food storage containers that fit in your cabinets rivals the birth of a child or at least somewhat close. It’s like a game of Tetris trying to figure out what depth, width, and height will fit on your shelves!
I have ended up with some “extra” food that doesn’t completely fit into the storage containers in my upper kitchen cabinets. In order to keep that food fresh, I bought the OXO air-tight pop-up food storage containers below. They are larger, so they would not fit in my upper cabinets. However, it works out well to keep extras in these larger bins in my lower cabinets. Remember, I mentioned that we don’t have a pantry, so we need a place to keep additional items.
Open Food Storage Containers
For the most part, I put items that are individually wrapped or larger items like chips into the open food storage containers. I found the large open food storage containers at Target in the Dollar Spot. Ikea has fantastic large bins as well.
Here is another large bin from Target that would work for chips and other bigger food items:
The clear open storage bins are from The Container Store. I got them in a few different sizes.
For my cooking condiments, I used the small kitchen cabinet turntables (10″) from Target. I got the larger size (15″) for my corner shelf in order to hold medicines and other toiletries that we keep in the kitchen.
I bought this expandable spice rack from The Container Store for our millions of spices! They would fall all over the place before, and now they are staying in their spot!
Believe it or not, I got rid of a ridiculous amount of cups, mugs, and water bottles! We still have a few left, so I found a water bottle storage holder that was the best storage idea for my corner cabinet!
Anchor Jars
I knew that I wanted to put my flour, sugar, oats, and pancake mix into anchor jars on my kitchen counter. Target and The Container Store are where I found the jars. I bought three one gallon jars and one three quart jar.
Labels
When I asked for a Cricut Explore Air 2 cutting machine a few years ago for Christmas, this post was what I was most excited to do with my Cricut!!! I had seen these gorgeous pantry and kitchen labels that I wanted to have in my kitchen. Since we don’t have a pantry right now, I wanted to create the same look using my kitchen cabinets. I used a font in my Cricut Design space for my labels. I just had to type them, cut them on the machine, and transfer them onto the food storage containers!
If you don’t have a cutting machine, you can purchase adorable pantry labels on Etsy like THESE or THESE!
Or you can use alphabet stickers to make your own words like THESE
Kitchen Food Storage Containers
Before
After
There is so much extra space in my kitchen cabinets after decluttering and organizing! I still can’t believe it! Our kitchen is so much more functional…and pretty! I actually want to be in there and don’t try to avoid it!
So if you ask me, “Do you feel more organized?” My answer is “YES!!!”
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