Product reviews, parenting articles, and advice for first-time moms from the experiences of real-life mommies.

If you don’t know who MeckMom is, I highly suggest that you check out my original post on this fantabulous lady! I told Shawn, “I want to be more like her when I grow up!”

So, after two of my beautiful friends followed her steps on organizing a pantry and sent me the pics to prove it, I decided I should probably get on the ball and get mine done, too.

The fact of the matter is that I’ve been wanting to do this since I first read her blog a month ago. And then to add to it, a dear person was over at my house while I was unloading groceries one day and decided to help me – my normally organized pantry was already overflowing and in great need of help when this just sent it straight over the edge into chaos. Take a look at this BEFORE pic and you’ll agree it was most definitely an SOS message!! (If you click on the pic, you’ll see a bigger version of it and be able to see just HOW bad it really was!)

So, I finally bit the bullet, went to Wal-Mart and spent a little over $20 on baskets (You can save money on the shoe box size at a dollar store, but I wasn’t sure they’d be big enough), and then took a couple of hours to re-organize my pantry into neat, orderly bins. Since I had different categories of stuff than MeckMom’s handy labels, I went ahead a created my own. (A bit more time consuming than I’d like to admit, but I AM a perfectionist by nature…) I also re-organized and labeled my recycling and table linens on the bottom of my pantry at the same time.

I finally achieved TOTAL pantry make-over!! Check out this AFTER pic and see what you think. All I know is that I’m super excited about what I’ve been able to accomplish in just a few hours over the past couple of days. I know it remains to be seen if the pantry will stay this clean, but just to know that it CAN look like this is encouragement enough.

And, now I’m so motivated I’m ready to tackle my next MeckMom challenge. How about you?? Leave your thoughts and experiences with reorganizing your pantry below. And then maybe we’ll all tackle our refrigerators together…