The $20/$20 Challenge: Stephanie From Idaho Shares Her Pantry Storage Tips

I’m picking up great tips right and left from some of these awesome $20/$20 Challenge submissions. Stephanie’s story is no exception {I love her cardboard stacking idea!}:

Hi Mavis,

My name is Stephanie and I live in SW Idaho. My mom told me about the challenge you’re doing and prompted me to participate. She has done a lot of work organizing my pantry for me, but I have kept it up and love it.

I cook mostly from scratch and go shopping about once a week. I do my best to make a menu plan and go shopping from there. I like to use in season produce. I like shopping Costco’s coupons and the dry bulk bins at WINCO to stock up on staples.

Here are a few tricks to keeping my pantry in order. I keep flour and sugar in 5 gallon buckets. They have gamma seal lids which makes it easy to get into them frequently. I do some canning and I’ve learned that jars stack easier if you put a layer of cardboard between them. I cut up the Costco milk boxes! I actually use boxes for a lot of things. I cut them short and then use them to contain bags of beans, packets of hot chocolate, microwave popcorn, and an excessive amount of water bottles and reusable cups with straws. I like to use my canning jars to store items I get from the bulk bins. Like steal cut oats, panko bread crumbs, wheat berries, etc. I have a little wire shelf I use where I keep chips, pretzels and the like. It helps use up the vertical space without squishing things.

I keep appliances that I use often easily accessible and tuck away other items that I don’t need as often. I also find it very useful to label things. It is so easy to quickly forget what the white powder is.

So my big freezer in the garage is kind of a beast and it’s hard to keep it organized. However, there is some organization that I keep up. I use the baskets to store containers. I freeze things like pie filling, jam, broth, apple sauce and those get to stay in the baskets. I make pizza weekly and I buy toppings in bulk and store them in a basket.

I like to use ice cube trays to freeze small portions of things like lemon juice, broth and homemade baby food. Once they have set in the tray I pop them out and put them in a freezer bag and store them in the freezer in the house. Below the baskets the rest of the freezer is divided up. I try to keep like things together. Again, this makes it easy to know where to look to find what I need. I have a section of the freezer for the homegrown meat from my in-laws and other meat that I buy in bulk, portion and freeze. I have one whole section for home grown corn that we’ve bagged up and frozen. Other sections are for frozen treats and other homegrown stuff that has been frozen.

It’s really nice to have a big freezer like this. It allows me to stock up when things are on sale and preserve veggies from my garden. I find it best when storing things in bags in the freezer to put them on a try to freeze flat and then they stack and stand nicely.

Are you getting your pantries camera ready? You can participate in the $20/$20 Challenge by simply sending in pictures of your pantry. Find out more about the $20/$20 Challenge: Show Your Pantry – Fill a Pantry!