On My Way to an Organized Pantry

I love it when my home is organized.  For some reason it just makes me feel better.  I tend to get depressed when it is not organized.  Unfortunately that means I am depressed about 90% of the time.  Yes, sad, I know! Anyway it is a new year and I am in the mood to organize so I started a simple project of cleaning out my pantry.  Well, it was suppose to be simple.  Perfectionist Me showed up and had to go look on the internet to see how everyone else organized their pantry.  That was a huge mistake.  After looking through hundreds of pictures of perfectly organized pantries,  I realized very quickly how inadequate my own pantry was.  But here is my dilemma; we are a one income family.  That fact has forced me to learn to become frugal.  I don't have the money, nor if I did could I really justify spending that kind of money to organize a pantry.  I was starting to throw myself a little pity party until I saw a tutorial on how to make a cute can organizer over at Then She Made....  It was perfect: cheap, cute, and would help me organize.  Amy over at Then She Made... has laid out exactly how to make an organizer out of an empty soda box, scrapbook paper and Mod Podge.  She is a genius, and after following her instructions this is what I made:

I love it!  I really can not begin to tell you  how much I like it.  So much in fact that I had to go ahead and make another one.  I used a larger 20 can box for the second one to accommodate some of my larger cans.  I can't decide which I love more; the organizational beauty of the device, or the prettiness of the paper.  I will just go ahead and confess that I am addicted to scrapbook paper.  Have you seen how many different beautiful papers are available?  There are so many gorgeous papers I love, but they don't always work with the pictures I have.  That problem is now solved.  I have no idea why it took me so long to figure out to decorate my home with the paper I like so much.  I like that paper even more when it is on sale half off and only about $0.30 a sheet.  An added bonus is my prerogative to change my mind stays in tack and I can always change it to whatever style suits me at the moment.  I am afraid I may have found a new hobby started a new obsession.

One thing I learned when making my version of the can holder was that Amy at Then She Made... was so smart to use two coordinating papers.  Perfectionist Me did not have a lot of fun struggling with lining my paper up to match the pattern.  It is not perfect, but it does the job well and makes me smile when I open my pantry and see a pretty little organizing thing sitting there that didn't cost $30.

I plan on making more so I can move cans into the pantry and out of my closet, out from under the china cabinet, and everywhere else I keep them stashed :)

I have already started on my next project with scrapbook paper and will show you soon!