her lovely nest.: organizing the kitchen pantry

have you ever counted how many times you go in and out of your kitchen pantry every day?

no? hmm. maybe that's just me.

[the inspiration, all from HomeGoods]

I must open that door a million times a day. and while there was nothing inherently wrong with it [it's chock full of nice built in shelves and a great wood floor]... the walls were basic builder's cream paint and it wasn't very organized or pretty. the husband would argue that it doesn't need to be pretty.

c'mon son. you know better than that.

I feel like I say that a lot around this house...

so one day I decided to pretty-ify it. of course that meant taking everything out and piling it in the dining room, taking special note of how many gross expired items were in there. old gross stuff, meet garbage can.

cue a couple of coats of my favorite Ralph Lauren paint, called Artist's Studio, in an eggshell finish. I adore this color, which is a cloudy grey-blue. it's made an appearance in lots of rooms in our house.

[clean, painted pantry...ooh spy that little bit of awesomeness @ bottom right?]

though I'm sorry to say that Ralph Lauren doesn't make it anymore, your local Home Depot can probably mix it up custom since they used to sell it. it's easy for my Home Depot to find it in their computer.

my wonderful white built in shelves were in good shape, I just cleaned them and topped them with a couple of coats of water-based satin Varathane Diamond Polyurethane, which you should be able to find in any hardware store.

[yes that's a hook for my aprons, yay!]

my favorite new item in the pantry is the glide-out shelf that we made. we got a piece of MDF wood and cut it to the desired length. on the bottom, we installed these drawer slides from Home Depot. an inexpensive drawer pull [again from Home Depot] completed the shelf. when it's pushed back, it's flush with the shelf that it's mounted on.
she's pulled forward in this pic:

[glide out shelf. adore.]

see how the drawer pull is mounted under the shelf? I considered mounting it on the top, but when the heavy baskets were piled on, I felt like it was easier to pull from the bottom so that's how it ended up down there. I'm really happy with this addition to the pantry and I'm planning to install 1 or 2 more...

I really wanted the wire bins with the paper towels to sit on the top shelf, but they're just a wee bit too tall so they're tucked under the bottom shelf.

in addition to the beautiful baskets and bins from HomeGoods, I gathered some wonderful Anchor Hocking glass cracker jars from Target.

I can't seem to stop buying these glass jars.
it's becoming a real problem.

I loaded up the baskets and jars and put everything back in.

[glass jars, baskets for oatmeal and all-important coffee!]

well, almost everything...at least the important stuff: coffee supplies [yes!], pastas and grains, oatmeal, some summer dishware.

[heavy stuff in the baskets on the glide out shelf]

just so you didn't think I forgot about the other side of the pantry...behold the baking shelf!
wow looks like I need to refill my supplies doesn't it?