A couple of months ago, I had the privilege of organizing the pantry of a woman for whom I've worked since my days at Butler, Shirley. I was so honored when she reached out and asked if I could help give her pantry a major overhaul. She told me a story of how she was having a gathering at her house over the summer. A few of her friends were helping her get things ready for it. While she was outside speaking to the guest of honor, she heard a crash come from her kitchen. She rushed inside to find that multiple items had fallen out of her pantry during her friends' attempts to locate something. Shirley said that was when she knew she needed to make some changes with her pantry. So we set up an appointment, and I went to her house to take a look at the pantry. Check out these before pictures...

Shirley's pantry has a lot of great space! Her biggest complaint was that everything just got shoved on the shelves, causing items to get lost or forgotten, and making it really difficult for everything to stay organized and neat. I immediately thought of using bins on the shelves. Not only would they help keep all of the items together and organized, but they would also allow for easy access to items on the higher shelves. I took some measurements and set out in search of the perfect bins for this pantry overhaul.

I knew the bins would need to be something durable. They would need to be able to hold heavier items and would also need to hold up when being taken on and off shelves... which led me to look for ones made of metal. After a bit of shopping around, I sent Shirley some options I found that I thought would work well in her pantry. She decided on the Omaha Stacking Bins from The Container Store. When she sent me her choice, I secretly jumped for joy at the thought of getting to spend some time in my happy place. Who doesn't love The Container Store?! Except for maybe my little brother... Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed myself! :)

While I was researching and shopping, Shirley and her husband were also busy. They decided to replace some of the shelves in the pantry as well as brighten it up with some pale yellow paint. I am SO thankful her husband is handy because I would have had no clue how to replace any of the shelves. :) They also took the initiative to clean out the pantry before I arrived, so everything they either wanted to get rid of or no longer store in the pantry was already out of the way. This made the organizing go so much faster, and I was in and out in a whopping two hours. I went back a couple of weeks later and added some custom labels, which will help them keep their pantry even more organized. I know I may be a bit biased, but I think it turned out great!

The most important part is that Shirley and her husband are happy with the result! I had so much fun with this pantry overhaul... and the icing on the cake is that The Container Store "liked" my Instagram post. Needless to say, I was like a little kid on Christmas morning! :)