Kitchen Pantry

Make the best use of your pantry shelves as you can.  I like to copy grocery stores by lining up similar itmes together in rows.  All the canned vegetables in one section, fruit in another, meat in another, spaghetti sauce and pasta in another, cereal in another, and snacks in another.   Store smaller items together in bins.

A food storage expert friend taught me to use plastic soda and juice bottles, cleaned and well dried, to store dry foods.  I store them on their sides so I can easily see what's in each bottle.  I'm much more likely to use foods like lentils, brown rice, split peas, and black beans when they're in a managable size in my pantry, than I am if they're only stored in big buckets in the basement.  Other dry food stored here are popcorn (we don't use our microwave), rock salt for making healthy ice cream, wheat bran for muffins, and so on.

Buckets on the pantry floor can hold flour, sugar, rice, and grocery bags.  Make sure the buckets you access regularly have easily removeable lids.  Gamma lids make food storage buckets user-friendly.

 Hooks can hold a broom, dustpan, mop, and duster.

Hooks for holding aprons.  You can't see it but right next to the aprons is my favorite little feature of our pantry.  It's a motion detector light.  I LOVE it.  The previous owners had added it, and we were quite enamored with it.  So we (I mean my Man) installed one in our master bedroom closet, and the garage!  Cool.

 A smaller set of shelves hold appliances.

Attach a bulletin board to the inside of a pantry door.  This can hold lists of friends' phone numbers, a ward directory, family goals, and other information.