Organized pantry, home organization for move clients in Orange County, CA.

I adore pantry projects, they may be my favorite area to organize. Not just because there’s so much potential for design… but because it’s such an important area of the home that affects everyone in the household!

This project was part of a move my team and I did a couple of weeks ago. We settled several parts of the home, but this area was definitely an exciting space for our client because she was going from a cabinet style pantry to this walk-in space.

I love the mix of textures and finishes we used in the space to create obvious categories, and pretty design elements. Want to know what I feel we did really well for this client? We kept the design secondary to function.

Here’s what goes through my mind when I’m designing a new pantry for a client:

What are my client’s priorities? When I did a consultation with this particular client I noticed a couple of things right away- not only was my client chic, she was already organized on her own with a great eye for design. Aesthetics would likely be important to her.

What do they have time for when they’re putting away groceries? While getting to know my client at the consultation I learned she’s a busy mom and professional, she’s limited on time. Whatever I came up with needed to be simple and easy to maintain, without being basic. This client was not basic and she deserved an equally effortless and chic space.

What can we compromise on to give the client the most functionality? In the design I chose to use a mix of bins and products to create ease and function, while having a secondary focus on aesthetics.

Let me show you in pictures what we did:

We used a pretty focal point with these 3 jars at the top for sweets. Placement for these gorgeous glass jars would be important considering there is a 7 year old in the household who’s little hands might have a hard time not dropping them. For that reason we chose the top shelf… but also, we wanted to limit her access to them as a snack option. Permission for sweets is always a good idea with kids.

Speaking of the adorable 7 year old, we made sure her snacks would be within reach and easy for her to help herself. Part of creating independence in our kids is giving them ways to help themselves.

Snacks are a great category to unbox. Snack boxes are often bulky and make it hard to gage quantity… which only makes shopping more difficult. Above shows a rounder we used for smaller snacks like bars and snack packs. Below shows open baskets used for larger snack bags and snacks from big box retailers like Costco.

People ask me all the time which bins they should use for certain area, and I always say it depends on what your needs are for the space and your time. If you’re a busy professional like my client, you’re not going to have more than a few minutes to unload groceries. If that’s the case you want to pick and choose which categories you’ll remove from their original packaging. Some categories I like to move to containers would be cereal, basic baking goods (flour, sugar, etc), and foods that aren’t in resealable bags, but won’t be finished in a single use (rice, pasta, chips, etc).

For everything else- I say keep them in their original packaging, but use opaque bins or baskets for like categories (grains, sides, breakfast, crackers, nuts, sweets, etc).

When you use clear bins for a variety of foods and packaging, it can look chaotic. I like to reserve clear or see through bins for categories that are uniform or can be neatly unpackaged in rows. If you don’t have time for that sort of thing… it’s best to use some bins you can’t fully see the categories inside.

Walk-in pantries tend to have tricky little corners that can easily become wasted space. I like to place rounders in those corners and use them for condiments and jarred foods.

Canned goods can be be hard to see and often are purchased in larger quantities. I love to use risers for these spaces. Not only is it easy to see what you have, but it’s pretty too.

So there you have it, a pretty pantry that didn’t compromise on function. We kept it simple with only a few unboxed snacks and unpackaged baking goods and sweets. Nothing color coded or meticulously lined up.

Did you see an idea or product you’d like to duplicate in your own home? Go ahead, borrow it!!! Here’s a quick and easy link to shop the products we used.