Dawn lives the fast life. Her job as a marketing manager for Porsche means many dinners in fancy restaurants. “That makes it hard to eat healthfully, since you never know what you’re going to get,” she says. When Dawn is home, she enjoys cooking for her husband, Ron, and her Cooking Light Supper Club. She stops by the grocery store frequently, instead of shopping once for the entire week. She and Ron enjoy diverse flavors and often try new foods. That’s why pantry organization is crucial: “I’d love to have a better pantry so I can cook more spontaneously,” she says.

Pantry Problem
Dawn’s system of kitchen organization was truly spontaneous. Drawers and cabinets were randomly stuffed. Foodstuffs stacked helter-skelter filled the floor-to-ceiling shelves of the pantry, which is about as big as a Porsche’s backseat. Ingredients were hard to find. The canned chipotle peppers for one of Dawn and Ron’s favorite dishes, roast pork with chipotles and honey, could have been anywhere—behind a jar of peanut butter, under a bag of fusilli, or behind the rice-wine vinegar and olive oil.

Solution
First, McCreary made the most of Dawn’s small storage space. Baskets in the pantry provided homes for small packages—packets of chiles and zip-top bags of nuts, for example—and allowed Dawn to store similar items, such as different types of pasta, together. McCreary also installed risers on the pantry shelves, Dawn’s favorite part of the makeover. “When you can see everything, it’s a lot easier to come home and put things where they need to go,” Dawn says. “Plus, when I look for something before making a shopping list, I know what I have.”

Next, McCreary tackled drawers and cabinets. She sorted the items in each drawer, using utensil dividers to group like with like. “I prefer interlocking dividers that you can configure,” McCreary says. “Everyone doesn’t have the same setup or the same utensils.” Finally, heavy appliances like the mixer moved from their remote location in the laundry to kitchen cabinets that had previously stored rarely used vases (which moved to the laundry room).