Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Party in My Pantry

We finally got the long-awaited kitchen pantry installed in our condo! I love it! It makes our kitchen so much more organized and makes it much easier to buy food and stock up (which could actually lead me to cook more).

Here's the story of the pantry ...

In the the kitchen area of our condo there was a coat closest. I'll give you a minute to process that... A COAT closet in kitchen area of Southern California condo. I don't even wear A coat in Long Beach, let alone enough coats to necessitate a coat CLOSET.

The useless coat closet:


So we hired a carpenter to put in shelving to convert it into a pantry.

His finished product:


And then I stocked the pantry and added spice racks.

Our FINISHED Pantry:


So to recap our food when from being housed like this:


To this:


Talk about an easy improvement! And my Mom said a pantry raised the value of our home as well!

So now that I have a pantry to store my kitchen goods, I want to have items "on hand" for meals, so that I basically just have to buy fruits/veggies/dairy on a weekly basis. What items are your "must stock" items? Items that you always have on hand in your pantry or kitchen cupboard?

14 comments:

i. me. mine said...

Love the new organized pantry. A and I just organized our panty as well this weekend...it was a disaster!

But as for must have items in the pantry: (remember I'm new to all this cooking stuff)...I always keep dry italian bread crumbs (for chicken, meatloaf or other recipes), sauce packets (the ones you usually just add water to and boil), chicken or vegetable broth for soups, pasta, lots of bottles of wine...haha, and brown sugar, cake mix, chocolate chips, cupcake holders, vanilla...the baking essentials incase I get the itch to bake something sweet.

d.a.r. said...

Oooh that is awesome! I love it!

I asked my mom this question when I first got married and started cooking. She told me to write down my ten favorite things to cook (or, at least made the most often), then a list of the ingredients. Most of them had overlapping stuff, and that was the "necessities" I would personally need.

Stuff like baking soda, baking powder, flour, brown sugar, white sugar, bread flower, a myriad of spices, taco seasonings, tortillas, several kinds of pasta-lasagna, spaghetti, penne, a couple different kinds of jarred pasta sauce, chocolate chips, pancake mix, rice, frozen veggies and frozen chicken (okay, that doesn't go in the pantry, but you know what I mean!), cereals, cream of chicken soup (for casseroles!), beans, canned tomatoes...okay, the list is really long.

But take a look at what you like to cook and what you most use! Everyone stocks their pantry differently!

ashley said...

That's awesome! Your before pic is exactly what our current situation looks like.. our apt doesn't have a pantry or closet in the kitchen :-)

Mojito Maven said...

ummmm can you come over to my house and help organize our pantry and add cool shelving like that??? LOOKS AWESOME!

Lindsey said...

Wow it looks amazing!! Great job!

Mrs. Realife said...

Fantastic! I love using space effectively!

Unknown said...

That's wonderful!! I stock my pantry with almost everyting the other girls said...they gave some good advice!

AmberW said...

Oh how excellent!
That looks so neat and tidy :) I love me an organized kitchen!!

Anonymous said...

I soooo need that in my place! My kitchen was renovated by a young, single male - so a pantry was not on his list of "must haves." I keep all of my food in various drawers. : (

ingrid said...

Your pantry looks amazing!

We store all kinds of food in our house. I love to bake, so we always have all the baking supplies other girls listed above. I also like walking down the dry food aisle at Trader Joes and buying stuff that we can make quickly.

Rachel said...

Looks great!!
How weird - a coat closet in the kitchen of a condo in Southern California???

By the way - you've been TAGGED!! You've already shared the 6 random facts, but I thought I'd tag you with the Superior Scribler Award and the Your Blog is Fabulous Award!

...love Maegan said...

we have the same situation but our coat closet has all of our dishes/pots/pans/silverware/etc...because there is no room in our tiny kitchen for it all :)

Lea Liz said...

Hello! I stumbled upon your blog and wanted to comment. Love the new pantry.. I always keep canned fruits,canned veggies, spahghetti sauce, noodles, mac n cheese, cake mixes.. easy stuff and sutff you can use for other things as well

The Mrs. said...

We are doing a little remodel and had our pantry redone! It's life changing I tell ya!

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