Area #4: Pantry and Small Cupboard

I have to skip area #3 for another day or two because Kevin is working on some coat hooks and a shelf for the entry room.  As soon as they're done I will tell about that area.  The pantry was a fun project.  Everything was pretty orderly, but I realized that I was keeping every last pantry item possible in my little pantry.  I sorted through things and took some of the bigger items and items that were plenteous (15 jars of spaghetti sauce) down to the food shelf I have set up in the basement.  This gave me a lot more room to organize and label what does need to stay right on hand.  Here's the pantry before I did anything:

I used some free labels I had seen in Better Homes & Gardens a few months ago.  They are available to download and print from their website.  I used the basket label, toy bin label, and the rectangle tag label in case you're interested in doing some of your own.  Now my pantry shelves look like this:

And like this:

 The other part of this area was the little cupboard right next to the pantry.  It's above the stairs to our basement, so it's a little hard to get at and has been a dumping spot for a lot of random things.  Here it is before.

I decided to move several things and narrow down what gets stored in this cupboard.  The basket right in front got simplified to hold batteries, string, and tape. I went through the light bulbs and got rid of several that we don't even have lights for.  Here's the cupboard now:

Tomorrow's area is the Kitchen.  This one may be more complicated, but my sister-in-law Ellen will be coming over to clean, so we should be able to get a fair amount of it done.