Pantry wars:

If you would ask me what the number one thing that has disappointed/annoyed/enraged me about this house, it is this:

Yes, that tiny little half-door is our pantry. To be honest, I never even really THOUGHT about the pantry when selecting our floorplan. Our rental had an AWESOME, huge pantry. Yet another thing I apparently took for granted.

One of the things I like about our builder is that they have so many floorplans that every house in the neighborhood is different (and even if you pick the same floorplan, you can change it up and customize it). But the downside to that is that they don't have every floorplan available to view, which means we did not see the inside of an actual house with our floorplan before we started building. If I had, I would have definitely changed the pantry (it would have been easy to take away a few feet of the laundry room to the left to add more space to the pantry).

We are not at all the type that "stock up" on groceries. We basically only buy what we need for that week. And yet, this is what the inside of our pantry looked like when we first moved in:

Despite my best organizing efforts, it was so crowded. Things were stacked four-deep on those tiny shelves. You would have to move a whole pile of stuff in order to get to what you need, which drove. me. crazy. I am someone who HATES clutter, I need to have open spaces.

I knew this would have to be one of the first projects we tackled, since this just wasn't a "liveable" situation. The issue is, in such a tiny area, how do you add more space?

I decided to add more shelves to one of the side walls (to form an "L" shape with the existing shelf). So this is where my newly-converted handyman husband came in.

He built:

I painted:

Once the paint was dry, I tried once again to organize the pantry utilizing my new "L"-shaped shelves. But, surprise, surprise...it still wasn't enough. So, even though we knew it would make the pantry very tight, we added shelves to the other walls (to form a "U" shape).

Once they were finally done, I got to organizing. While the situation is still not ideal, I now have SPACE!! You can actually see things, and there is (a little) room-to-spare.

Some might say I have a few spices:

It's definitely still a work in progress. I am planning to slowly start buying more containers to store things like pasta, rice, cereal, etc. And maybe one of those two-step organizers for the spices and canned goods.

Of course, this is the dream:

One day I plan to wallpaper the back shelves. You know, once a hundred other things I want to do are done! Oh, one day! :)