If you’re like me you’re always looking for cheap tricks for organizing your kitchen.

Does this picture drive anyone else totally crazy? Can anyone tell me WHY we have 3 bags of old bread with only the heels in them? Or why in the world are we keeping the bag of tortilla crumbs? I couldn’t stand it anymore. My tall skinny pantry HAD to go.

Here’s what it looked it.

The left photo was the pantry. There was a bunch of random stuff in there and it was just all over the place.

The right photos are the cabinets I had thought would be pretty looking with my serving dishes in them. Yeah… that was a fantasy. Definitely not real life! So here’s the real life version. I wanted to make the snacks less accessible to my climbing toddler and I needed to get some order in my pantry life. So I yanked everything out of all of the cabinets. Fun huh?

Guess it has to get worse before it get’s better right?

So here’s what I learned!

5 Cheap Tricks for Organizing Your Kitchen

Use Storage Boxes:

We’ve all seen these in perhaps your kids bedroom or in your closet. We like them. Did you know if you get lucky you can buy these suckers at the Dollar Store. Yep. I said the Dollar Store. So. I bought 12 of them! 2 small skinny flat ones, 3 big tall ones, and  7 medium brown ones. Does that add up to 12? I don’t know. I blog – I don’t do Math ;)! I couldn’t find them all in the same color and I will admit I did have to go to 2 or 3 Dollar Stores to find what I was looking for. These bins are WAY flimsy-er [is that even a word] than the ones you would put your kids toys in. My kids think bins are also stools so these would be a no go in a bedroom or play space but they are just right for this low traffic place. You’ll need to play around with the boxes to see how they best fit in your cabinet space.

Label Everything:

If it isn’t nailed down, slap a label on it. Trust me it will make you feel super organized. Even if you’re not! I found these cute kraft paper labels at the Dollar Store too. I bought several packs so I wouldn’t run out. This way I’ll have back ups too. In case I decided to go on another labeling spree.

Quick Tip: If you’re labels aren’t sticking to the boxes… use a little dab of fabric glue on the ends and that should do the trick!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:

Someone way smarter and more pinteresty than me posted this great idea about using your coffee creamer bottles for storage. I’m pretty much addicted to coffee so we have a crap ton of these laying around the house. We buy the big ones and the small ones so I had a variety of sizes to choose from. I’ve probably saved them over the last 3-4 weeks to have enough to get to where I am now. We’ll keep saving and transferring more over to them as we go.

Quick Tip: Getting stuff into the small hole at the top of the bottle… Think sticky brown sugar from a bag to a bottle…. ugh. SO. We bought a brand new funnel for oil from Walmart for .88c and used a knife to cut the long pointy end down. I turned on the gas flame on my oven to melt down the weird edges and voila…. a perfectly fitting funnel. This is a must have if you’re going to actually use these bottles in real life. Otherwise transferring it from it’s original packaging to the bottles will make you want to poke your eyeballs out with a fork.

Un-Bag It:

I seriously cannot stand a bunch of half eaten or folded over chip, pretzel, whatever bags in my pantry. It makes me want to go all kinds of Hoarders crazy on my pantry. Then I end up throwing away food that we probably would still eat. So I found these awesome 24 cup rectangular containers and bought a bunch of them. They run anywhere from $5 -$7 each. I picked up a few each time I went to Walmart and I use 8 on a regular basis.

Use What You Already Have:

Remember the crazy cabinet with all of the metal racks for serving dishes. Well when I transferred all of the serving dishes to the skinny shelf this one particular tall stand would not fit anywhere. I hated the idea of taking it apart because we all know it’s a pain in the butt to put it back together every time you want to use it. SO… I put it in a different place. My serving bowls fit perfectly in the rings of the stand and it’s perfect for keeping them stacked neatly! TA DA! I encourage you. Think outside the box. Did you buy a bunch of extra crap when we hilariously made all natural cleaner before? Awesome! Use what you have to put things in smarter places.

Alright! That’s it! It’s so simple and cheap… sometimes even free! Wanna’ see the final results? You’re gonna love it!

Now I feel like the lady who’s wearing awesome underwear. No one will every see them but she knows they’re there… and it makes her feel amazing! My hidden pantry gem.

So what do you think? See how much easier it’s going to be to get the fancy plates and even sideways storage for my baking sheets! Super exciting. The kids have access to the snacks that they would be getting already and the baby can’t reach them. I also added a safety lock on the bottom cabinet so we can prevent a chip o lanche toddler style.

Here’s Your Challenge:

 Did you notice the 2 big bins on the top that don’t have a label? They have the storage bottles in them.

So, I’m leaving that up to you. What should I put on the top 2 boxes. Big Bottles, Small Bottles? Dry Foods?

Help me come up with the title for those labels?

Thoughts? Can’t wait to hear them!

#sonottogether