Finally a pantry and food storage

This closet has been a catch all ever since we moved into this house 7 years ago. I have always wanted to make it into a pantry because we just don't have enough cupboard space in our small kitchen. I finally just did it and I'm so happy with it! When I first started thinking about making this a pantry years ago for some reason I thought I couldn't make it work, but with a few tweaks on some ready made shelving it works great! I don't know why I waited so long. I still would like to get some kind of organizers to go either on the doors or on the part of the wall in front of the shelves that isn't being used so I can better utilize that space. It is great to have somewhere to put appliances that I use, but not enough to want on my counter and a place for larger boxes etc that wouldn't fit in our regular cupboards.



After getting my pantry done I got to thinking about food storage again. We had quite a bit of food storage before Liam was adopted because we were focusing on getting it, but that really fell by the wayside when he came. Now I'm trying to get back to stocking up and using our food storage. We have all of some of the basics, but are still working on getting the rest of it. The hardest for me is powdered milk. I hate to buy it because we don't like to drink it and it doesn't store very long and it's so expensive. These pictures are of our "food storage closet". I wish we had more room--don't know how we'll fit everything else we need for our years supply in there!



That white wire shelf thing in front is from the now pantry closet and I'm trying to figure out how to make it useful in the food storage closet, but right now it's just taking up space. The case lot sales are coming up here so hopefully we'll be able to stock up on some of the stuff we use often so we can save money in the long run. We spend WAY too much on our groceries. It's funny that when we were poor college kids we could eat for pennies, but somehow now that we have money to spend we way overspend. I really gotta work on that. How do you keep your food bill under control??