Raise your hand if you’re in your first pantry. This client was new to their beautiful home and had moved from a South City home with 3 kids and no pantry. Can you imagine how excited she was to have a pantry!?! Her laundry room is adjacent to the pantry through a door, so she decided to add that to the project. The 3 kiddos take their lunch to school every day, so it was important that they could easily reach their school items, as well as their snacks. This project included everything from trash bags to tupperware. We started fresh and worked together to design her layouts and find awesome products for her family. This family has a wonderful space in the basement for backstock which takes off some of the pressure to have everything in the pantry. This pantry has the basic wire shelves, along with the sliding doors in the laundry room. Those doors might be cheap for builders, but they make it more of a challenge for homeowners to get to their stuff in the center of the closet. Does anyone have a builder friend who can look into that (asking for a friend)? This couple wanted matching products, which is so much fun for me to help find stylish, functional products that the client loves! The husband was very involved in choosing products, which added a unique dynamic to the project.
When it comes to product choices, the options are almost unlimited. I sent them a few pictures of some options to get the juices flowing. To my surprise, they fell in love with a wire and wood product from HomeGoods. As some of you may know, when buying items from HomeGoods, it can be hard, no, nearly impossible, to buy products in bulk. And we needed a few for this space. Que the all-day trip around town to HomeGoods after HomeGoods trying to find more of the one they liked, #epicfail. Well, I came home and was talking to my husband about it, and it took him about 2 minutes to find it online, grrr. Insert plug for a husband-wife organizing team, which he has not yet bought into. Maybe we’ll do it as a hobby in retirement, hmm… So friends, for future reference, Sierra.com is under the same parent company and HomeGoods, TJMaxx, and Marshalls. We found the beautiful bronze and pewter wire with wood bottomed baskets, as many as they needed, and we found a smaller option too! I recommended how many to get and she bought them directly through the Sierra website. In my day-long run around town I also found a larger one that matched. You better believe I bought it, and they decided to keep that one too. Other products we used were the wonderful Oxo air-tight canisters and cereal containers, and a great can organizer from Amazon. I love that I’m able to find great products at a great price at Costco and share that with my customers. We worked through the entire process side-by-side. In one of my follow-ups photo reviews I realized that the vertical bars on her setup was on the inside of the shelves. I compared it to mine and found that mine was on the outside. I never would have thought it would be different from one to another! This affects the depth of the containers that you can use on the shelves. This client went to the trouble to move the bar from the inside to the outside in between visits. She totally rocks!!
We spent more time in the pantry than the laundry room, but one of the things I remember most about this project was sitting on the floor of her laundry room, identifying electrical cords, putting them into zip-lock bags, and labeling them. It turned into fun scavenger hunt around the house! They used the same beautiful wire and wood baskets in the laundry room closet, but got stuck deciding on what products to use for their seasonal/winter accessories-hats, gloves, etc. She and I both searched, but the couple decided to continue their search until they find a product they both love.
As far as labels go, we kept it simple. We put chalkboard labels on the Oxo containers. Now, I love these labels, but my big complaint is that the writing can’t be easily wiped off as they advertise, but they’re still great labels, especially for the price. It’s not a big deal to pull off an old and put on a new one if you need. They didn’t want labels on the wire baskets, to keep a clean simple look. Goals met. New organizing concepts in place. Spaces effective. Smiles all around.
