So, I’ve decided to take on the task of organizing my pantry, piece by piece. This all started out of my guilt at the horrible snack/lunchbox choices I made right before school started. I was so excited about the deals I got at Costco that I neglected to make the healthiest choices.
See what I mean? Chips, cookie assortment… Some of it was OK – fruit cups and gummy fruit chews, but still….
I also didn’t like those big huge boxes from Costco, so I started thinking about how to make it more aesthetically pleasing and filled with healthier lunchbox snacks. Here’s what I did:
First, I measured the space I had to work with so I could buy containers to fit it. I also took into account exactly how this space would be best utilized. Marley makes her own lunches now so I wanted to make sure everything for lunch was in one spot – bread, plastic utensils, etc.
Then, I shopped. I found these great containers for less than $6 at Wal-mart:
They are meant for shoe storage, but I like them for my purpose, too. They have drawers to make it easy for Marley to get to her snacks, and they snap together.
Once I got my new snacks and new storage ready to go, I cleaned out the pantry. It’s always good to have a helper, too:
Dakota took the boxes to the recycle bin after she made sure I got all the food out of them. 🙂
When I stocked up on snacks, I also stocked up on Ziploc bags. Here’s a sample of what I got:
Since part of my problem with my pantry before was with all the boxes, I got rid of those – hence the Ziploc bags. I poured all the Goldfish into one big gallon bag and grabbed a 2/3 cup scoop – perfect size for the snack bags. I separated all the Goldfish into snack-size Ziploc bags to make lunch prep easy and quick.
I did the same thing with the graham crackers. The portion size is 2 whole crackers, so I put 2 crackers in each snack-size bag.
I’m also going to put some peanut butter into little plastic containers to send with the graham crackers – just haven’t gotten that far yet!
I put all those individual bags of healthy snacks into my new storage containers, put plastic spoons and forks into big cups, and set up our nice, new, organized lunch station!
See! Bread – check! Fruit – check! Snack-sized bags of lunchbox goodies – check! Utensils – check!
Soooo…much better. And much easier on the eyes 🙂
(And yes, we have 3 trash cans. One holds our 40 lb. bag of dog food, one is trash, and one is recycling.)
As you can see in the title of this post, this is Part 1 to my Pantry Organization posts. I inspired myself with this lunch station re-do, so I will be tackling the rest of my pantry in small sections, and I’ll be posting those in later posts.
Maybe this has given you some inspiration – for healthy snacks AND organization!
For more kitchen organization, try these posts:
4 Responses
I love it!! I don’t have a pantry though 🙁 The graham crackers and peanut butter though is a great idea to send with my kids.