Organizing a Pantry with Chalkboard Tape

How we went about organizing our prantry with chalkboard tape

One of my Christmas presents from my parents this year was a roll of chalkboard tape and a chalk marker. I was so pumped. My parents know and understand my love of office supplies so well. I’m not sure if this stuff is fairly new or I have just been oblivious to it in the stores but I am going to guess it is the former because I’m usually pretty on top of the latest tape craze. I’m not ashamed to admit I have bought decorative duck tape before for no real reason other than it had Super Mario on it (I ended up giving it to my brother) and impulsively buy washi tape just about every time I got to Target. Because you know, you can never have too much of that stuff for projects.

I immediately started to look for a place I could use my chalkboard tape in our home. I think I was scaring Brent with some of my suggestions. Then it hit me. I could use it for labels on my OXO food storage container set that Brent got me for Valentine’s Day last year. I was only kind of utilizing them but had not really taken the time to actually migrate all our food from packages to storage containers because I was still trying to figure out how to label them. Chalkboard tape was my answer.

How I Organized our Pantry with Chalkboard Tape

To organize our pantry I used: food storage containers, a roll of chalkboard tape and a chalk marker, that’s it! Well, besides all the other storage stuff I swiped from my mom when she was purging her own pantry. Score! I realize this concept of using food storage containers with chalkboard labels in the pantry is nothing new or even remotely unique. What really made the difference for me is using the chalkboard tape. There are a lot of chalkboard labels out there but they were so small and too decorative in appearance. I had a hard time writing on them and fitting in everything I needed to write. Plus they didn’t cover much of the container and I could never get them to erase very well.

^^^ I loved that the chalkboard tape was already the perfect height. All I had to do was cut it to the width of the container. Plus, it offers a modern appearance and a realistic writing surface size. I also found that it wipes off really easy.

^^^ Let me just say using a chalk marker also makes the world of difference. Have you ever tried to write with chalk on a very tiny surface? It’s hard. There was almost no point in me even bothering writing with the chalk on those tiny chalkboard labels because half the time Brent couldn’t even read what I wrote anyway.

^^^ My mom gave me this idea, which I think is brilliant! Her suggestion was to use the chalk marker and write on the back of the storage container the date I bought the food and the date it expires. Which is a really good point because once you transfer the food to the storage container and throw away the package, you no longer have the reference. And I don’t know about you but I have enough to remember besides when I bought a package of rolls. I just made a little note on the back of the container with a B and the date I bought it and an E and the date it will expire. The chalk marker works really well for this because it writes on smoothly and wipes off really easily once you reload the container with new food. Note: I would like to mention that the photo above is from when I organized my pantry about a month ago. I promise we are not still eating rolls that are about a month past their expiration date.

We don’t have a lot of food in our pantry right now because there are just two of us and we usually only buy food for a week at a time. Plus, I am a little obsessive about throwing out expired food every week on trash day. So the whole organizing the pantry process only took a few hours one afternoon.

Both Brent and I agree it feels nice to have an organized pantry. Below is what it looks like now.