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About a year ago, I got sick of all the mess and clutter in the pantry. I decided to organize my pantry and recycled all of my plastic storage containers.
Since then, I’ve started using all kinds of other containers to store our bulk grocery purchases. Since my motto is “make it, don’t buy it,” I prefer to use containers we already have instead of buying new ones. Here are some tips I’ve learned while organizing my pantry this last year.
Organizing with Glass Jars
Glass jars are best for freezing, so I keep yeast and homemade breadcrumbs in recycled spaghetti sauce jars in the freezer. We eat a lot of popcorn and different types of beans (not together!), so those items stay in the pantry in canning jars.
Organizing with Plastic Jars
Recycled plastic containers are useful, too. I don’t microwave in them or freeze them, but they’re perfect in the pantry where little hands might reach (and drop) them. The ones on the ends originally held cashews and the ones in the middle were peanut butter jars. These hold oats, homemade rice-a-roni mix, pasta, and cornmeal.
Organizing with Jumbo Plastic Containers
You can also use jumbo plastic containers (like the ones for cookies or pretzels) to hold flour or sugar. Since I started baking our sandwich bread, I have lots of flour on hand. These large containers are easy to fit a measuring cup into, as well.
How do you get the smell out of the lids? We buy a lot of pickles around here & I’d love to reuse the jars but can’t get rid of the pickle smell. 🙂
Hmmm…good question. I run everything through the dishwasher, which usually does the trick. A soak in baking soda water might cut the vinegar smell!
Great idea! I see that you have home made rice a roni mix there, do you have the recipe for it? I can’t seem to find a ‘search window’ on your site to search for it 🙁 I am on a home made mix kick right now.
Hi Christi, I use this recipe from The Prudent Homemaker: http://www.theprudenthomemaker.com/index.php/chicken-rice
Greetings, I use a lot of cat litter and have the big 35-40 lb buckets, so far they’ve worked great at the garage for storing stuff, and I use one to hold potting soil for my indoor plants, one is used to store recyclables (I live in a condo) and then one more (cleaned out of course) hold cat food….ANY other ideas for these awesome buckets????
The default storage for most of the stuff that we buy in bulk is just the bag that I used in the store, actually. For grains and things like sesame seeds I’m using the beautiful empty 750 mL liquor bottles from Mike’s collection. I have a shortage of bottles, though. As much tequila and scotch as he’s gone through, we still have more grains than bottles. Plus, each bottle is only about 3 scoops from the bulk bin. The bottles are all so beautiful, and I think all the different grains and lentils just add to the charm. For a while I wanted to go with a canister system; but I realized that with my OCD I’d need all the canisters to match. So using the bottles short circuits that by making beautiful storage that does not match at all. For cooked beans, some dried beans, and nuts I’ve started using jars saved from whatever comes in a jar. Mostly pickle jars since we go through pickles faster than peanut butter, mustard, or tomato sauce.
Besides using mason jars for tons of stuff I use non-standard jars from applesauce for things like bulk herbs and yeast since they don’t need to be sealed. I love the squarish plastic containers that salsa and some fancyish grains come in. So I have a few of them I have collected over the years and that is what I refill in my pantry for rice stashes and lentils and beans and such. They fit nicer than a round jar and they hold enough to last a couple meals. It tend to stash things like that in multiples..somehow despite the disarray of my house I am a bit OCD about certain things and feel like I need to have things grouped such as all grains in the same type of container. For a little while when I had needed to supplement my twins with formula I saved those jugs with lids that now hold herbs for my goats. Big pretzel jugs get reused for dog treats or human treats. I have a stash of yogurt containers and baby food square containers and plastic juice concentrate that I need to find a good use for…hmm.
Many moms are willing to give away their baby food jars – or sell them cheap, like 10 cents each. Wash and dry thoroughly, label them, and store your spices in them!
This might sound weird, but my daughter and I got those Flips yogurts when they first came out. I didn’t like them – tried several – but decided to keep their containers. Now what I do is buy my own add-ins (like hemp seed, pumpkin seed, whatever), and use the containers to know how much yogurt and add-ins to even use. We *love* refilling these; it’s a treat!
*not sure why I said ‘whole pantry’.
One whole shelf in our whole pantry is filled with recycled ice cream buckets. We store everything in them – flour, sugar, rice, oats, wheat, germade, powdered sugar, elbow macaroni, etc. They stack on top of each other nicely!
Oh that’s wonderful about the ice cream buckets. We just started using them. I kept looking at the price comparison and couldn’t reconcile buying a carton, when it’s so much cheaper to buy the bucket. And the bucket doesn’t freezer burn. Besides, spring/summer is full of ice cream and strawberries!
I’m even thinking of keeping things like powdered sugar and flour in plastic bags and then putting them together in the containers. Or even a “baking products” container. You’ve got me thinking now…!
I started re-using peanut butter jars and such a few months ago. I’ve been wondering what in the world took me so long to think of it! =)
I love this idea never thought to keep the peanut butter jars but we have saved butter bowls and the deli meat containers. Great post!