HOW TO MAKE YOUR SMALL KITCHEN PANTRY FEEL 4X BIGGER
WITH LIGHTING
Pantry organization and clear plastic bins. You have seen this stuff before. Pantry organization has been all over everyone’s social for the last 4 months. Here is what you haven’t seen before: How to upgrade your kitchen cabinet into a well lit, luxe, and well organized pantry. The secret? You guessed it - lighting!!
This past weekend, I decided to organize our kitchen cabinet (aka our pantry). This is the only storage space we have for pantry goods. So you can see that it was starting to get crowded, and very stressful to look at! I knew I wanted to rid our pantry of the store containers and boxes, and upgrade to the clear plastic bins you see everywhere. I then installed a lazy Susan for our most used spices and oils for cooking. Lastly, we installed these spice racks on the inside of the pantry door.
Before
ahhh looking at this now makes me SO stressed
After
ABOUT THE STORAGE
There are SO many options for pantry organization out there. Between the container store, rubbermaid, and the dollar store, you never run short of clear wicker, or wooden containers to put your food in. I’m not going to lie to you either, getting rid of the store containers and boxes gave the look of my pantry a serious upgrade!
Shop the Storage
method to the MADNESS
Of course all of the new storage solutions have some sort of method to them. The lower cabinet has more heavy duty pantry items (cleaning supplies, soup cans, extra condiments, and plastic bags). I definitely made the lower cabinet less “pretty”, if you will. I still am so happy with how much larger the space feels after I organized everything by category into the clear bins!
The upper cabinet is reserved for our most used spices and cooking condiments (oil, taco seasoning, and paprika are on the weekly rotation). When clearing out our pantry I realized that a lot of the clutter came from all of the store bought containers all pushed together. You can call this OCD, or type A, but wow, even putting sour gummy worms in a clear container really makes you feel better. It’s the small things that count, right?
WHAT WAS MISSINg?
Once we installed all of the decorative clear bins, lazy Susan, and storage containers I was really happy with the results! However, I knew it was missing something. Remember my favorite design trick? Lighting!! In order to give our pantry a serious upgrade I would want to add lighting into these shelves somehow. This was harder to do since we are in a rental. You can’t really hardwire any lighting in our scenario. So, I did a lot of research and found the best battery operated, motion detector light. I decided that going down this route would be the best option here.
Sounds simple to find, right? Nope. Every puck light, or motion detector light I found would only work when it was dark, and only turn on when there was motion detected. This obviously wouldn’t work because inside the cabinet would always be dark, and the light would be on all of the time. Luckily, I found these lights that are specifically made for under counter lighting. They turn on when motion is detected and turn off after 15 seconds. They are battery powered, and so easy to install. My favorite part about these is the installation actually. They are held up by a 3M Magnet strip that will easily detach when you decide to move or relocate the light! I also love that this makes it so easy to change the batteries too.
The Best Lighting Solutions
Final Results!
Once the lights were installed I was SO happy with the results!! I mean, this seriously transformed our rented kitchen pantry into something that looks completely custom! I love how easy and affordable this was to achieve too. The bins I got at Target on sale, and the lights were $20 for a set of 3. Total I only spent $100 on completely transforming and organizing our kitchen pantry.
NOW THAT THAT’S COVERED, DO SOUR GUMMY WORMS OUT OF A CLEAR CONTAINER HAVE LESS CALORIES THAN WHEN THEY COME OUT OF THE BAG? ASKING FOR A FRIEND…
