Have you noticed a theme around here lately?
I've been organizing and DIY'ing like it's my job. This weekend, I hot glue-gunned AND Mod Podged something. It's like I don't even know myself anymore.
While I've been waiting for baby girl to hurry up and get here, I've been taking advantage of some extra free time - and some seriously crazy nesting instincts - and getting around to all of those little projects that I simply never had time for previously.
It's like anything that gets in my path is going to get reorganized...and if this baby doesn't show up soon...well, there's no telling what I'll do.
This weekend was mostly spent relaxing at home and getting some final things finished, like hanging artwork in the nursery, putting together a little bouncer and reorganizing some cabinets. The first thing on my list? My little baking pantry. Of course, I got right in there and neglected to take a before photo...but I'll just describe it as half-filled mason jars of random ingredients (first organized here), and a bin of sprinkles, food coloring and baking cups...none of which could be identified in any easy way.
After just 20 or so minutes, my two baking supply shelves looked like this:
Not bad right? I know you have nothing to compare it to...but just trust me when I tell you that it's like..100 times better than it was.
You see, I have this small obsession with mason jars. I use them for just about everything. I love that they can hold just about everything - from rice or oatmeal to chocolate chips or food coloring. Not to mention that they make perfect party favors.
I started by emptying out the jars that had little to no ingredients left in them or consolidating what I could (like two half-filled jars of chocolate chips and 3 - yes 3 - partially filled jars of chopped walnuts...yeah, I dunno). I then washed and dried the newly emptied jars.
Next, I took down my little bin of god-knows-what goodies and emptied it. I threw out any containers of sprinkles that were mostly empty and finally got a good look at how many baking cups (like, 100s) and half-filled food colorings I had, not to mention 3 half-empty boxes of birthday candles that had opened and were flying around in there. Yikes.
And so it was (once again) Ball jars to the rescue!
I organized the baking cups into 3 piles: everyday, Christmas and other holiday. I then popped each grouping into a wide-mouthed Ball jar.
Then I put all of my smaller sprinkles containers into a tall Tupperware canister. And the candles? I took them all out of their opened & falling apart boxes and just dumped them right into a jar. I actually think they looked really cute and fun this way...kind of like crayons!
And lastly, I popped all of the little food coloring bottles into another jar.
I love everything about this since now I can see exactly what I have and what I'm missing!
And as for the larger sprinkles containers, I just stacked them on top of the jars to save some space.
Voila!
A newly organized - if not quite 100% perfect - baking cabinet!
I think my favorite part is the baking cups in the jars. Such a cute and easy way to wrangle baking cups, not to mention that I can now easily see that I have like 200 Christmas cups and probably won't need to buy any new ones come December.
So what do you think?
What are your pantry cabinet tips and tricks?
What have you been organizing lately?