Our farmhouse pantry has gone through several easy inexpensive makeovers over the years. I have not changed anything structurally, simply organized it better and used up-cycled materials to give it that Old World feel. I also created these free printable labels that I am sharing below :)
We try to make most of our meals from scratch with homegrown and organic ingredients sourced either from our farm or as locally as possible. Our pantry reflects our goals, with ingredients purchased in bulk, dehydrated fruits and veggies, and not much pre-made stuff.
The Pantry Before Old World Makeover
I cringe when I look at the before pictures. I had tried to be organized with my bins and baskets. Things always seem to become chaotic in the pantry. Plus all the crazy colors and packaging are overwhelming.
Sugar cereal especially is so depressing to me. I have been trying for years to convince my family that it is a dessert at best. But (I say this only partly jesting) breakfast cereal is one of my husbands love languages. Since I do utterly love him and want him to have his comfort food, I accept that we will always have it in the house. At least I found a cute solution for storing it! Keep scrolling to see that.
The buckets! For bulk flour, wheat, rice, and sugar storage they are a great option, but so ugly. I originally wanted my husband to help me build a wooden flour bin. He made a valid point though about it being floor level and keeping mice and other pantry pests out more effectively with plastic.
The Pantry After Old World Makeover
This has been a gradual process, an evolution as our eating style changed and our budget has allowed.
I gathered jars and bottles from a variety of sources:
-gallon jars from dill pickles shared at church picnics and from our family’s love of eating them
-spice jars (along the side shelves) made from jars of Costco peaches
-half gallon mason jars purchased for decorating at a church Christmas party and then put to good use
-maple syrup and kombucha bottles saved and given to me by kind friends who know my love of glass bottles :) and some glass apple cider bottles from our local farmers co-op
Pantry Makeover Details
I had 3 main goals for this pantry make-over: pretty, harmonious, and functional. Here are all the details on how I worked through each of these things while trying to keep within a budget.
Color Harmony
One of the things that drove me crazy about the old pantry was the jarring number of colors. Even my jar lids were all different colors. And they all had different labels.
I found that I could spray paint most of the lids with my favorite oil rubbed bronze color from Rustoleum.
For those that were plastic, I bought these black metal wide and regular mouth canning jar lids to replace them.
No more crazy packaging
I purged all the sauces and blends that we use less than once a month to the basement pantry shelves. Then I poured my soy sauce, molasses, vinegars, and oils into these pretty bottles. As I mentioned above, some of the bottles were gifts, some thrifted, some leftover from apple cider or kombucha purchases. It gives me so much joy to see glass jars instead of plastic bottles with gaudy labels.
Breakfast Cereal
If there is any part of a pantry that can quickly get out of hand, it’s the packages of pre-made snacks. We generally do not keep many of these in the upstairs pantry. I keep a few in the basement pantry: a box of saltines for sickies, graham crackers for campfire s’more making, granola bars for spur-of-the-moment hiking, that kind of thing. The only two pre-made treats that we almost always have on hand upstairs are the open boxes of breakfast cereals and tortilla chips. I have tried a lot of different cereal organizers over the years. None have been as good as this method. (Our stores of unopened cereal boxes stay down on the basement food storage shelves).
Here is what we are doing with open boxes of cereal in the new pantry storage system. I throw away the box and keep all the bags in my new cereal bin. That way they can have several bags open at the same time, no need to dump them into other containers, and I do not have to look at or make space for the ugly boxes.
Bulk Storage bins
These bins that I found on Amazon are a nice compromise between the wooden grain bins that I still hope to find or make ‘someday’ and the ugly floor scraping 5 gallon buckets that we had been using for the past 15 years. They each hold 24 quarts and have a removable lid that makes them easy to refill. I like that they are modular and can be pulled out individually, which was not a feature of my grain bin idea. My one criticism of them is that they do not seal as tightly as I would like. We rotate through the contents fairly quickly though, so I doubt we will have any trouble with spoilage.
The Labels
I made and tested several different versions of these labels before I finally settled on this design and font.
These free printable label pages are for the spices and the bulk bins. I am happy to add additional labels for spices or bulk items. Just drop a comment on what ones are missing and I will update the file to include them. My handwriting is not pretty so I totally understand being annoyed with trying to print neatly in those blank labels.
If you would like to special order a different format, size, etc. for the label printable, I am happy to help with that too. I will charge a small fee and fill the order via my Etsy shop: MidAtlanticHomestead.
The labels on my other mason jars and bottles were made with my trusty Brother P-touch label maker. Nothing fancy, but they are easy to remove and washable.
free printable labels
I would love to have feedback and suggestions on what other items should be on these label pages. Thank so much!
Click here to download pdf versions of these pantry labels:
Leave a Reply