New Year... New Pantry

Happy New Year! We're only 3 days in* and so far 2012 has been pretty much perfect for me. It helps that it started as a three day weekend and I got quite a bit of stuff... including relaxing done, but I just generally feel very content right now and certainly happy with the way 2012 is shaping up!

Last week sometime, as I was recovering from Christmas... We hosted Sean's family for Christmas at our house in Delaware and it was wonderful, but by the time the dust settled and everyone left I was EXHAUSTED...so I was spending some time totally vegged out on the couch watching a show called The Amandas. Its part awesome home organization and a greater part insane OCD cattiness. At one point the main Amanda (who calls all her assistants the Amandas) broke down crying and telling her team how flawless she was, it was epic. ANYWAY during the show you get to see main Amanda's ridiculously organized house and pantry... the bug was planted and I needed to deal with mine!

You see I have a pretty big pantry, even by Texas standards, and HUGE pantry by Northeast standards... most houses we looked at didn't even have them. But it was a pretty big mess, I suppose having plenty of space allows you to be a little bit  messy.

Yes, I am relatively embarrassed to share these pictures... somehow it looks even worse than it did when I was living with it this way... One of those popcorn boxes up there turns out to have actually been empty. Who knows how long it had been in there like that!

So Saturday night Sean and I went to Lowes and ultimately Bed Bath and Beyond to find some organizational items... Thanks to a Christmas Gift card this project was almost entirely free!! I was a little dissapointed at the selection of items, or lack there of, but I bought a bunch and assumed we'd return stuff etc. For the record Sean lost interest at Lowes and was totally done by the time we got to Bed Bath :)

Sunday morning I slowly cleared out the pantry. I totally covered our dining table, filled the laundry room and spilled over into the office. It was a mess.

Only a few items had expired... one in particular expired in 2007, a full 2 years before we moved to Delaware go figure! I had no less than 3 opened boxes of lasagna noodles... it looks like I made lasagna and needed just 1 extra noodle, 3 times... each box was pretty much full.

Once everything was cleared out... I started by painting the shelves bright white. This was a REALLY frustrating step. The white actually covered really well, but up against almost white walls the new shelves didn't really show up... so I felt like I was painting and painting and not really getting anywhere.

The real satisfaction came when I got to put the wall color up. Which I mixed from paint around the house. I was going for aqua... and started with the ONLY blue I had which is Behr rain water, its really barely there blue. So I added some acrylic blue (not much I ran out) some acrylic green, some acrylic black and some relatively dark latex green. At some point it was a total disaster and I just gave up. I thought it turned out way more gray than aqua and I was ok with that, but when I started putting it on the walls it was actually a perfect aqua...go figure.

this picture was taken at night, it looks a little more blue than it does aqua. 

Then I started putting things back in... I got some small shelves to hold cans which I really like and ended up with lots of brown baskets from TJ Max. I love the finished product. In fact I am finishing up this post a week after I started* writing because I was out of town for a while... I MISSED my pantry while I was gone. So Sad I know.

The peg board was pre-existing I just added more hooks and those baskets. 

I've added more stuff since this picture was taken. Its actually kind of fun to grocery shop and KNOW what I need and that I have space!

I love that wire basket at the top, I wish I had something prettier to put in it, but for now it holds light bulbs and candles. 

 I wish I'd had the energy to paint the door, but I just didn't. Painting all the shelves and trim took much longer than I expected. Maybe someday I'll get rid off the rest of that green!