Organizing the Pantry on a Budget

There are lots of sites out there like Pinterest in which to glean ideas for your own pantry. I used solid pine shelving units from K-mart at $19.98 and $29.98 set up in my tiny kitchen. The first set I purchased I painted white. It is used for my baking goods. At Christmas, Staples had small packages of labels on sale for 25 cents each package. I wish I had bought more of them.They work perfectly in my printer (it adjusts for printing pictures) for using on my glass canisters. The canisters are Pyrex purchased at thrift store for .99-$1.99 each. I believe that they are from the 70s and they still have their seals intact. The black container that I am using for canned evaporated milk is an old plastic magazine holder. It works perfectly.

I also love reusing glass pickle jars when I can find them. They are perfect for storing all kinds of baking supplies. I am considering using #10 cans as well for bulk purchased items. I bought 25lbs of oats recently without having adequate storage. I was forced into using gallon size plastic baggies. I don't want this to happen again. I am trying to avoid using any new plastic as much as possible.

I also discovered that some of my old Tupperware lids will fit onto small soup cans. I believe the cans are 10.5 ounces. I am thinking I will use them for small packages of nuts or homemade baking powder. They might work well for powdered drink mix too. Do you have any ideas?

One thing I have not been happy with is how I store my herbs and spices. For a while, I had them in a cabinet. I tried adding tiered shelving to help with locating the ones I needed easier. This wasn't the ideal situation. The truth is that if I can't see something, then I don't use it. So they were moved to an open shelf cabinet. The problem with this was that it is hard to remove the ones I needed from the back without having to remove all of them. I tried putting them in plastic organizers, but they often fell out of the containers making things messy too. Also there wasn't any room for expansion with additional jars for next years' growing season. One idea I considered was an old fashioned spice rack. I have seen custom wood ones available online, but at a higher cost that I could spend. My solution (until something better comes along) was to use the tiered rack on top of the open shelf cabinet. Do you have a system that has worked for you? Leave a comment