Organizing My Kitchen with Repurposed Packaging

Sometime in the midst of our 5 moves in 6 years, I decided that it wasn't wise to buy a bin that fit perfectly in a kitchen only to find that it wouldn't fit at all in the next kitchen. It felt wasteful and was definitely annoying. I purchased a few small, multi-purpose bins that are able to fit in any kitchen. When we move, those bins find a new home and purpose quickly. But for larger storage, I've chosen to repurpose items I already have. Lately, I find myself repurposing a lot of food packaging materials.

One of my favorite repurposed organizing bins is the lid from plastic vegetable containers.

Plastic lid corrals jars on the top shelf of the fridge.

A plastic lid contains loose items so they don't get lost in the back of the fridge.

Plastic lid catches the drips from bottles in my cabinet, keeping the cabinet from getting gross and sticky.

Since every house we've lived in has had a different sized pantry (and a bunch had no pantry), I repurpose containers for organizing the food and snacksin my current pantry.

 

                                      I use jars that popcorn comes in to store noodles and pastas.  (see my earlier post about these great jars).   

Gotta love Costco for supplying an organizing mom with an amazing selection of organizing boxes! I'm currently using a Jif box to hold my breads and rolls. I'm on the lookout for something prettier, but the Jif box works just fine for now.

I use a Go Go Squeeze box to hold different fruit snacks for my family to take in their lunch boxes.

I use another Costco find, an empty animal cracker jar, to store individual serving lunch box snacks. The jar is perfect for my pantry because 1. it's square and conserves space on my shelf  2. is clear so we can see what snacks are available and 3. has a large mouth so it's easy to reach in and grab the snack you want.

That Go Go Squeeze box is a great size. I use another one in my freezer to keep bags of frozen vegetables together.

I'm also using the bottom of the produce box (the one I took a lid-tray from aearlier) to hold bags of chopped spinach. 

Using the boxes to hold bags of frozen food helps keep the freezer organized and prevents everything from falling out on me every time I open the freezer. It also help prevent a bags of vegetable from getting lost in the dim recesses of the freezer.

More Costco boxes help me store items on the top shelf of my cabinets.

I also reuse plastic buckets from ice cream, laundry detergent or my favorite Zippy's Chili!

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It may not be glamorous, but it's useful AND cost effective, oh, and earth friendly, too.


Update:

I did another repurposed organizing project {here} showing 1 item used 10 different ways!