Chalkboard Paint + Pantry = My Big Idea!

Once upon a time, my pantry looked like this.

Kind of a disaster. Okay, a real disaster.

After we moved into our house, my husband built the shelves for the pantry. This was after we’d been in the house for two weeks and all of my food was stacked in the corner of the kitchen. At that point, I was so glad to get the cans of cream of mushroom off the floor that I just ignored the aesthetics and thanked God it was done.

Almost two years later, I decided a little facelift was in order. I’ve seen some beautiful pantries on pinterest. I wanted to make it look pretty without spending a fortune on it and I didn’t want to take everything out of the boxes they came in. (I have to know the expiration date. I am crazy like that.) I wanted to label everything but I wasn’t sure how much room to allow for certain items since my pantry may have more of one type of item at a time depending on what is on sale.

The shelves need to be painted and that’s when it hit me – Chalkboard Paint! I could paint the shelves with chalkboard paint and then I could adjust the labels anytime I needed!

Painting the edge of the shelf was super easy even with the “help” of my trusty assistants. I used a disposable sponge brush (the kind you get 20 for $1 on sale at Michaels) and had the first coat on in less than half an hour. Another coat and 24 hours later, I was ready to label away.

The only problem was the 2x4s holding up the shelves. They had never been painted either and were sort of an eye-sore. I didn’t really feel like painting them so I found some contact paper at the dollar store and cut strips wide enough to cover the length of the board and wrap around to cover the underside.

The contact paper stuck to face of the board but wasn’t strong enough to stick to the bottom. You get what you pay for.

I tried again with Laura Ashley contact paper I found at TJ Maxx and it worked perfectly. I liked the pattern better too!

After a quick clean out and a little organization, I am loving the final result!

I needed something to put snacks in for M’s lunchbox but didn’t have a basket the right color. I did have a white Halloween bucket from last year though.

I pulled out a couple of labels from a Groopdealz buy six months ago and covered up the ghost eyes.

Here are a couple more of those groopdealz labels. I love a label.

Having all the snack options in one place makes it so much easier to grab two items for her lunch box in the morning. I also took these little buckets from the dollar aisle at Target and put sandwich bags in one and plastic spoons/forks in the other. That way everything I need for her lunch box is in one place.

I grab the bread from the red bin on the left in the picture, PB&J, a sandwich bag, plastic fork, whatever snacks I pick out of the snack bucket and a juicebox from the fridge and sling everything in her lunchbox. Having everything in one place has really streamlined the process (for me anyway).

The black basket contains all my packaged seasonings for Chili or tacos.

The bag hanging on the command hook houses all of our chip clips.

Here is the finished product one more time!

UPDATE: I was so distraught over the poor picture quality I took a few more today after I cleaned the pantry out. So you’ll notice a few changes from the pictures above (better photo quality, hopefully, being one of them)!