MANY people ask me HOW I became a professional organizer.

I LOVE organizing! Maybe you do too? So how do you take a passion and make it a business?

Listen to my story here…

Lisa_Woodruff_Clever_Container

then tell me your story in the comments!

Want to know more?

Clever Container information.

Pantries are hard to KEEP organized because your families tastes, food choices and what’s on sale are ever changing. So, pantry organization is an area you cannot organize one day and then walk away.

It takes maintenance, purging and often a complete overhaul.

The first week I shared with you a standard pantry with wire shelves. Last week I showed a LARGE walk in pantry that was completed through my virtual services.

Today’s pantry is for those of you with build in wooden shelves in your pantry. I LOVE wooden shelves!

This client was not in love with her shelves. They were spaced too far apart and no matter how hard she tried, she could not find a way to best use the space.

This pantry had NO expired food to throw away. Many times just purging alone can give you more space. But in this pantry there was nothing to purge.

So the only option was to somehow access those pockets of space between the shelves. Enter…

my FAVORITE organizers. The shoe organizer to the right adds shelves – anywhere! Since I had the before pantry pictures emailed to me, I had already bought one shoe organizing shelving unit to match the pantry shelves.

I knew that the cans would fit perfectly!

While I was organizing I realized a second shoe organizer would be very helpful. I had an extra one in the car, but it was white and 24″ instead of 31″. The owner OK’d the addition and I kept on working…

This set of shelves was great for paper products, and pasta. Since the organizer was only 24″ it left a full foot of space on the right where I stored all the baking supplies. Since all the baking comes out when used, and it is not often used, it is OK that it is stacked in there!

Daily snacks were stored in a removable basket. Baskets are so great for those snacks that come in bags! A small lazy susan works perfectly to spin commonly used condiments.

A quick straightening of the top and bottom shelves and…

Since I had the pictures of the pantry and the measurements emailed to me I was able to plan this project and shop for the basket, lazy susan and shoe organizers before I arrived at the client’s home.

I spent 1.5 hours organizing the pantry which was .5 hours less than my estimate.

The kitchen is the HUB of the home. It’s command central. And it is always being pillaged by the natives!

Here are the top 3 problems most kitchen pantry stockers face:

#1 Stocking the pantry {AKA getting the food to FIT and be used}

#2 Eating what you’ve actually bought

#3 Knowing what you need to replenish 

Enter client #1 BEFORE

First I emptied and cleaned the pantry.

We moved all the coffee, powdered drinks and tea in to a beverage cabinet {The whole kitchen redo will be coming soon}

Some food was thrown away.

The Kitchen Aid mixer found a new home too.

Next I divided the pantry into zones.

The first two shelves I organized using Clever Container’s Document Boxes (#0213, $18.95)

The upper shelf is for crackers, soups, lunch and dinner “sides”

You can see the shelf with the 2 blue document boxes holds crackers and Ramen soup.

The lower shelf is for breakfast foods.

The red document box on the lower left is for candy. Red means STOP think before you eat CANDY!

The last shelf I organized was the one that had all the packety things.

I decided to use Clever Container’s Bin Pull Fridge with Dividers (#0596, $29.95)

It was PERFECT!

By adding some small rectangle white baskets I was able to create 6 sections for packets that ALL stood up!

AND the bin pull acts like a pantry drawer! AWESOME!

Here is the complete after:

I was done in 2 hours. I have 4 more pantries to show you over the next 4 weeks. The next two were also completed in under two hours. One pantry was completed using my NEW Virtual organization services.

The last one… was a special design.

How is your pantry looking?

Each person has a pendulum of organization they are comfortable inside. From Hoarders to Neat Nicks, your pendulum is somewhere in there.

No one ever reaches “perfect organization”. But many have learned organizational tips and tricks and created spaces they feel comfortable living inside.

Bumps and twists in the road of life can quickly overturn the most organized of homes:

a sick family member

a personal illness

depression

the addition of a baby… or two!

the loss of a job

a new job

moving

over-committing J

 and not knowing how to say, NO!

And there you find yourself. Overwhelmed. Unorganized. And not sure where to start to put it all back together.

A lucky few can afford to have a professional organizer quickly turn the chaos into calm.

Another small group can summon the strength and TIME it takes to reorganize their home-life on their own.

But most of us. Even the born organized ones. Get swept away in the tyranny of the urgent tsunami and find ourselves hopelessly wasting precious time searching for matching socks and late for work because the laundry never got put away. Or we spend a collective hour over the course of days looking for a form we “know” we have only to find it next week misplaced in another file.

I know, because that’s me. I over commit. Then get overwhelmed. Then get unorganized to the point of frustration. Then I melt down. Then hubby gives me time alone to “reorganize” myself and then I do it all over again.

Can you relate?

Daily tips

I have created Organize 365 to give you practical daily organizational tips that will make your life more organized thus making it more FUN! Like me at Organize365

Weekly post and Round-up

Then each Friday I will walk you through a bigger organizational challenge that I have personally solved at my home, or with a client I have helped.

And I am SUPER excited about my Organization 365 Link up! At the end of my weekly Friday post, other organizationally minded bloggers will link to their Organization 365 Round Up post on the their blogs.

If you blog about organization, click here to come link up!

So whether you are looking for daily organizational tips or in-depth organizational help, Organize 365 has you covered!