My pantry closet is small, but I managed to stuff it full of all kinds of things. My spice rack runneth over, but I’m not tackling that today. My focus is on the impending disaster that involves all my saggy wire shelves. I really despised the pantry closet because it was impossible to find anything. No matter how many times I would shuffle crap around, it never seemed organized. In a perfect world I would have a huge pantry room with all kinds of things from the Container Store to make it OCD heaven. Instead, I’m going to work with what I have and make it more functional for my needs.
This project started because I was tired of lifting a stack of cookie sheets to get to the bottom one. I wanted to store my cookie sheets and muffin tins in little slots with the pans turned on their sides. I’ve seen this done in so many ways on Pinterest and those pins inspired my attempt to wrangle my cookie sheets.
This project is similar to the closet in my office upstairs. You can read about that project here. I used thicker pieces of mdf to insure that the shelf didn’t swag under the weight of the canned items. The old wire shelves were holding on for dear life. It looked awful and I knew one day I’d come home to everything on the floor because the shelf finally gave out.
Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of the pantry before emptying it. The plan is to stagger the shelf heights to accommodate certain items, so no space is wasted.
Dad measured and we were off to Home Depot for a couple of sheets of 3/4 inch MDF. Whew, those sheets were HEAVY! Except for the slotted shelves, the rest of the project was simple. Install the brackets around the closet, cut the MDF to fit and sit it on top of the bracket. 
Most of my time was spent painting the closet and shelves. Wow, I didn’t realize how dingy that closet was until I slapped a few strokes of white paint on the wall.
I didn’t know how to build slots for the boards and most likely didn’t have the correct tools anyway. Dad figured out a way to drill some holes and we used small dowels to keep the boards upright. 
This shows the holes drilled on the underside of one of the shelves and it’s repeated on the top of the other shelf. Cut a piece of MDF to fit and slide it between the dowels.
I installed some temporary battery operated lights until Dad gets a chance to install lighting in the closet. It’s mostly finished and I’ll still play around with some of the organization over time. I’m happy with the cookie sheets being easily accessible now. Mission accomplished!
The containers are clear so I can see what the heck is in each one. Most of the organization bins came from The Container Store. I was able to corral all the snacks into one bin. A quick tip is to remove individually wrapped items from the original box. Those boxes take up a ton of space.
I still have a more organizing to do in this little space, but it’s a 1000% better than before.
