Kitchen storage tips

When planning out our kitchen three years ago, Mr.A was certain that we wouldn't have enough cupboard space with the amount of cabinets we were ordering. I reassured him that with our big pantry we would have plenty of space for storing things. I am glad to report that we do!
Here are some tips and tricks I use for storage in my kitchen. I'd love to hear what you use for your storage and organization in your kitchen. If you have babies or toddlers, you know that the sippy cups and bottles can be a pain to store somewhere. The valves go missing, wrong tops for the cups and a big mess is usually what happens. I have found a great solution for those pesky sippy cup valves and tops, a little white stackable storage basket from Target.

I also bought myself some more of these baskets and put granola bars, cereal bars, applesauce cups and the occasional package of fruit snacks in one in my pantry. It's so nice to just look in the basket and see how many we have left of something because people at my house like to leave empty boxes of granola bars and the like in the pantry. When someone decides they want a granola bar and goes to grab one, they come out empty handed.

I love using the see through storage containers for this reason as well, one quick glance and I can tell we need to add crackers to the grocery list.

In another large basket I keep our bread and peanut butter, which makes it really handy to just pull out of the pantry to make lunches.  

 The bonus is that these baskets stack on top of each other so they fit nicely in my pantry.

I also use one of these baskets to keep all my plastic container lids, seems they were always getting lost before but not anymore, all neat and tidy in their new home.

I also use this type of basket for my measuring cups as I had a hard time finding the right one when I needed it. It's been working out great, no more cups stuck under the utensil drawer causing a traffic jam.

Speaking of utensils, I keep my most used utensils in this cute little pitcher next to my cook top. It freed up some room in the utensil drawer and I love having them right next to me when I'm cooking.

I like having glass cupboards where I can show off my dishes. I first lined the back of each cupboard with scrapbook paper to give it some pizazz. I have white dishes so they can go with pretty much any color theme I go with in my kitchen. I also bought some cute flower glasses from Target to give a little pop of color in the cupboard as well.

We store all our "ugly" drinking cups and glasses above the sink.

I keep the kids' bowls, cups and plates on the lowest shelf in the pantry so that they can just grab their own breakfast in the morning. I have done this since our oldest was probably 6 years old.

Two of my children like to get up before Mr.A and I do and we love that they can just go get their own cereal and don't come asking us for help. My children have always been really good about not just eating out of the pantry whenever they want. They have to come and ask if it's sometime other than breakfast that they would like to eat.
One thing I was having trouble finding a home for was my bags of potatoes and onions.  I found this stackable storage basket at Wal-mart and it's perfect!

So that's it for my storage tips but I'd love to hear from you and what great solutions you've found to some of those pesky kitchen storage problems.

I'm linking up here:

Kitchen Clena Up Linky Party