our new house :: mason jar pantry

I’m taking a little break from unpacking and organizing our new house to show you what I’ve been up to in our kitchen.  Our kitchen is almost done and when it is, I’ll be sure to take some pictures and show you the end result.

My most recent kitchen project has been assembling our new pantry.

I love mason jars.  I always have.  We use them as drinking glasses and I have always enjoyed using them to store various things, pantry items being one of them.

With our new kitchen, I wanted to do something a little different with the pantry.  Our previous pantry wasn’t very conducive to a food storage system like this, but since our new pantry has drawers that roll out, it made storing food in mason jars very easy- and fun!

I didn’t use small sized mason jars, I used the bigger, quart-sized ones.  I wanted to use these jars to store the ingredients that I use often, but not in massive quantities (like different kinds of flours and sugars).  I’m using another similar system for bigger pantry items like longer pasta noodles and cereal, etc.

So far, I have stored the following in our mason jars:

• Semi-sweet chocolate chips
• White chocolate chips
• Dried cranberries
• Oatmeal
• Pecans
• Walnuts
• Cashews
• Almonds
• Pistachios
• Pine nuts
• Popcorn kernels
• Coconut
• Cocoa
• Basmati rice
• Brown rice
• Wild rice
• Chai
• Macaroni
• Quinoa
• Couscous
• Granola

A couple of reasons why I love this system:

• It keeps our food fresh.  Too often, we have had to throw food out because a box was left open or the bag wasn’t sealed tight enough.  I think we will waste less food this way.

• I really don’t like cluttered and disorganized kitchen cabinets- it makes my brain foggy when I try to meal plan.  Having our food in clear, clean, and organized containers helps me to maintain an organized and clean kitchen.

• I love the way it looks.  Cooking is much funner when I enjoy the kitchen I’m working in!

• I can buy all of the ingredients I need at the bulk stations at our grocery store or local co-op, in the exact amount that I need!  Therefore, I am cutting down on wasting a lot of food and money.  Also, it cuts down on accumulating a lot of trash- which means we don’t have to take it out as often, always a plus in my book.

• One of my pet peeves is discovering that I am completely out of an ingredient for the recipe I am using while cooking.  Using mason jars always lets me know how low I am on my supply of ingredients.  Super helpful for planning my grocery list.

• Mason jars are fairly inexpensive.  I bought mine on sale, actually. They last forever and are much cheaper than the glass containers I considered buying at Target.

Have any kitchen organization tips or recommendations for me?  I welcome any advice that has worked well for you…