Khloe Kardashian’s Pantry — On a Budget
by Katy on July 7, 2023 · 67 comments
I find it very relaxing to gaze upon aspirational photos of hyperorganized pantries, with their matching clear storage and perfectly staged contents. I’m fully aware that these photos are staged within an inch of their lives, but that doesn’t dull my lust for the perfectly organized pantry. Like Khloe Kardashian.
Problem? My house doesn’t have a pantry. So I store jars of bulk purchased food on top of the fridge and over the stove. Plus, my budget for an aesthetically pleasing pantry is bubkis.
So I shop at Le Yellow Bìn.
As well as Le Goodwill, which recently offered up these 44¢ half-gallon jars. (Used my 10%-off senior discount, bay-bee!) A perfect addition to the three I’d thrifted on earlier visits.
Especially since it turns out that the mason jars paired perfectly with the sweet vintage Hills Bros. lids I scavenged last month.
This prompted a chain reaction of me pulling everything out of this cupboard to clean and reorganize. A couple things got tossed, (is corn syrup normally a solid?) but it was mostly a process of grouping like items. Which pleases my animal brain.
All for 88¢! Although let’s be honest, Khloe Kardashian doesn’t need to worry about me besting her in the “Fanciest Pantry” contest.
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.”
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{ 65 comments… read them below or add one }
I thought her cookie jars were cute until I read that no one is allowed to eat the cookies. Plus they are lined up so that the middle is hollow. What I bummer. I also derived a measure of enthusiasm for reorganizing my pantry from these pictures. I was able to score 5 large pickle jars from a moving neighbors free pile. I am still looking for a fifth jar lid.
I have one large pickle jar that I’ll never surrender.
I have gotten pickle jars from the deli section of a grocery store. They said they just throw them away and I was free to come get as many as I wanted. I have gotten five gallon food grade buckets from Firehouse Subs, for $3, which goes into their associated non-profit that buys equipment for firehouses.
Those cookie jars, in a non-retail setting, look like evidence of OCD, imho. Then again, the Kardashians *are* all about selling *”it”.
Thanks for the real people/real food alternative, Katy.
Wow, nice deal on those jars! I recently moved and haven’t found any thrift stores yet, but the thrift store at my last location wanted beaucoup bucks for Mason/Ball jars. I did get a couple of boxes full of canning jars from my sister when her mother-in-law passed away, so that was nice and I do make good use of them. I also save glass jars from food products if they have nice threaded screw-on lids. And my son and his family frequent an ice cream shop that serves your treats in bespoke glass Mason jars. They don’t want them, so I am the grateful recipient.
“Bespoke” glass mason jars? so fancy!
I cannot believe how cheap those canning jars were priced. I guess not all Goodwill stores have savvy folks vetting donations. Selling at less than half price of new. I DO NOT frequent (purchase OR look) at Goodwill but have donated an excess of a single item while cleaning out parental house – they are NOT a non-profit but people think they are.
Loved seeing the Hills Bros coffee drinking guy== I had forgotten that brand logo.
Her pantry museum looks like it has to be dusted every other day. I don’t have the staff to spare for that.
Right, they’re probably busy polishing the silver and tidying the pool house.
Your comment made me smile because my first thought when I saw the Khloe pantry was: Wow, that would require a lot of dusting.
Katy, you would faint if you saw what either of my Goodwills would charge for that jar. I once saw an empty #10 plain steel can, the restaurant size beans and ketchup come in, priced at $2.
I picked up from you buying Bonne Maman jams on sale and saving the jars for storage. They are so sturdy and cute!
Yes, I use those as well for a cute cohesive look that comes with an initial jam surprise!
Ruby and Katie,
My Goodwill in MN sells the OUI (yogurt glasses-no lid) for $1.49.
Thank goodness it’s garage sale season!
Oops! I meant Katy!
I’m sorry.
No offense taken!
I much prefer yours over Khloe’s storage system. I think my living room and dining room could fit into Khloe’s pantry and I don’t like to have to hike to find my food. I also find your shopping methods easier, more fun and of course much more frugal.
On a side note Katy, have you seen American Experience’s Casa Susanna on PBS yet? It got me thinking about your Mom’s friend who was a transvestite and performer. It followed transvestites and one of the daughters from the 1960s and one of the wives who created a safe place for them in the Catskills. Great documentary.
I was thinking about how her pantry is the size of an apartment in the “Tenement Museum” in NYC.
I haven’t seen that, thanks for the recommendation!
I’ll have to watch for that too – I’m always happy to see a good documentary.
In my thirties I shopped at a co-op that had a jar exchange shelf. I brought in my empties and over the course of a couple years scored about twenty half-gallon orange juice jars. They are pebbled glass and have a squared-off shape. I use them to store the upstairs beans. The downstairs dry goods (including beans) are in a set of gallon Bonne Maman jars that I scored doing the epic cleanout of our deceased friend/hoarder’s house. Also rocking empty gallon tofu buckets and five-gallon peanut butter buckets from the current co-op for the overflow.
That is so cool!
I love “ upstairs beans”! I picture them as being classier than the “ downstairs beans”! Perhaps the upstairs ones sing opera and read Proust? Or wear teeny tiny bow ties/ tiaras?
I love your image, but actually the upstairs beans are downstairs beans that have been promoted.
I imagine the upstairs beans are older and being used first. The downstairs beans might be on the back of the use list. …lol
“Gallon Bonne Maman jars” – never knew such an exotic creature existed! That is a *lot* of jam!
Katy, I prefer your pantry! Not only frugal but beautiful, functional and sustainable.
Most impressive part of your pantry,to me, is that fire extinguisher right where it belongs. I have one, but I don’t “like how it looks” out on the wall so it is inside my cupboard.One day a family member said “Where do we keep our fire extinguisher?” Not good!! I am rethinking safety and will find a way to get our extinguisher in a place it belongs!
And I have yet to need it, but we all know where it is!
I like the look of your pantry, but as I am prone to dropping anything and everything, I would
be sweeping up glass and unusable food items. Original packaging works for me, sometimes encased in a food storage baag. And now I need a fire extinguisher (thanks, Madeline).
I’ve had glass jars above the stove for 20+ years and haven’t broken one yet, (knock wood) and keep in mind that I buy grains and beans in bulk at Winco, which means they don’t come in packaging.
And all it takes is bringing in one package with a stealth insect egg infestation to contaminate the rest of the foodstuffs. Sad voice of experience here. Insect and rodent proof (our next door neighbor is a hoarder) containers are worth the time and effort as “food insurance”.
So glad that someone else shops at Le Yellow Bin (the equivalent in my county is Le Bin Bleu). I’ve gotten herb/spice jars, interesting liquor bottles for herb vinegars, and various other glass storage containers (including the occasional Ball/Mason jar). And the county recycling agency is always moaning that the glass put in blue bins has to be made into glassphalt instead of recycled into more glass, so I regard bin picking as a victimless crime.
I also join Ruby and other commenters in astonishment at the low price of canning jars at your Le Goodwill. I haven’t seen a half-gallon Ball jar at any local thrift store for less than $3.
Don’t you mean “bleu?” 😉
Also, it’s rare that the big canning jars would be lumped in with the normal jars. Normally they’re priced higher, which is why I nabbed these without a second thought.
Katy, I so envy the prices at Oregon Goodwill stores! We were on vacation in Ashland last month and I picked up a few 79¢ mugs for my classroom. At my preferred thrift shop in Burlingame, CA, a mug costs $6! A lot of the Bay Area thrift stores have closed down in the wake of COVID. 🙁
That’s an excellent Goodwill, although not in my district. My daughter went to college in Ashland and I’d always visit that one.
I re-use glass jars for storage, too. I’ve got a bunch of gallon jars because I buy rice and popcorn in bulk. 4 came from a free shelf, 2 from Buy Nothing, and most of the rest from buying pickles in gallon jars. I buy a brand of spaghetti sauce that comes in jars that fit mason jar lids and we use them both as drinking glasses and for food storage.
I saw a picture recently of glass jars that had been painted to look similar to Pioneer Woman’s kitchen colors/style of jars. I think mine will stay plain, but I admired the repurposer’s talent and style.
Goodwill in my area charges 88 cents for more typically sized mason jars with no lid or ring. If one is going need to buy lids and rings to go with them, it’s cheaper to buy new. 44 cents for a half gallon jar is terrific!
I have spaghetti sauce jars from years ago that are Mason jars with lids. They’re all still functional. I too use them for both drinking and storage.
Anyone who spells her name Khloe is too fancy for my pocketbook.
Yours, Ktony
Anyone who spells her name Khloe is too fancy for my pocketbook.
Yours, Tony (aka Tony)
Whoa, that’s an awesome price on those jars at your Goodwill!
Blog worthy!
My porn, my fantasy, is a pantry( Ooooh! A PANTRY!) with square/ rectangular glass containers( space efficiency! I can see contents at a glance!) with matching bamboo lids ( love that look) What do I have? The usual collection of round airtight jars, that wastes space I don’t have! I use risers to add space, but things are, inevitably, behind things! Years ago I painted lids to match , but didn’t really feel it made much difference, it’s not the gloriously curated space I long for! I frugal the hell out of things, but I battle my yearning for a specific aesthetic! Strange, I have no yearning for diamond doodads, can easily resist the urge to shop retail, but pantry Porn has me drooling , every time! What is your “ hard to resist, but I’m holding firm” weakness?
I still have the glass baby food jars for bulk spices that I got from another mom when my 25-year-old was a preschooler. I painted the lids and they’re still in use!
Can’t do that with one of those awful plastic pouches!
My vehicle trash can is from a tub of baby wipes, it is at least twenty five years old.
KD, that is very impressive the baby wipes canister is still in use! Good for you! I liked the wipes containers they had when my now 41 and 37 year old “kids” were babies.
My mum’s scoop in her loose tea canister is from the baby formula when my brother was born – he’s now 55!
I love this!
Our laundry room wastebasket is the diaper pail we bought 28 years ago.
I really love kitchens with walk-in pantries. My first two apartments and then my grandmother’s house which I rented for seven years all had pantries. All were unique in their own ways, but I found the best thing about a pantry is the ability to hide the mess of dirty dishes while simultaneously entertaining guests at the kitchen table. The storage is great too.
Hunh! *Now* I have pantry envy… 8^D
New show idea: Who stored it better?
My grandmother had a Nabisco Premium Cracker bin in her kitchen. It has been a while since I have seen one.
I have one of those bins! Parents had a number of old coffee tins etc. I am so old I remember when peanut butter, mayo, jam/jelly etc came in glass jars with NO safety seal (and a 3 lb can of coffee contained YES 3 lbs). Since the Tylenol poisoning hit, things have never been the same.
@Selena, I still HAVE some of those old Mayo jars – they take a standard Wide Mouth mason lid, and some of them have been in canning rotation for over 60 years as they were my mom’s and granny’s. In the good old days (the early ’70s) the local recycling centre had many many shelves with jars to take away – lots of folk brought in their canning-worthy mayo and jelly jars and Mom and I went to get supplies every summer. That place burned down and I still mourn it.
I sold one of those Nabisco cracker tins on Etsy for $$$.
Looks great! Organization soothes my animal brain, too. I can’t watch Kardashian’s because they eat and drink out of single use plastics and argue too much.
This!!
My shopping venue is Le Mesh file folder box (left over from our office job days); we have a charming collection of spaghetti sauce jars, jelly jars (with the fancy gingham lids!) and yes, a few half-gallon mason jars, though none acquired for .44. I am, however, coveting your Hills Bros lids – my parents drank that when I was young and they bring back good memories.
Well done on your pantry re-org. Khloe K.’s got nothing on you.
I too have marinara sauce jars and jelly jars. They’re great.
Great post Katy.
I am a bit of a jar hoarder. I save a lot of glass jars that food items come in. I use them to store bulk items like oatmeal, chia seeds, nuts, dried fruits, legumes, etc. I also use them to store cooked food for refrigeration and freezing.
We did remodel our kitchen eight years ago and have a couple of cupboard pantries with slide out drawers, one on either side of our counter depth refrigerator. They are very nice to have but they will never be Instagram worthy.
I have three large jars from buying Bubbies’s pickles from Costco in the past few years. They are not gallon size but they are large enough to store leftover soup or to soak a pound of legumes.
I recycle my unwanted glass jars to a local Amish woman who does something with them, I think makes jelly, instead of in the recycling bin.
I have a bunch of the giant jars from the days that Costco’s salsa came in the large glass containers. No more, all large stuff seems to be in plastic these days.
I’m really confused about this. It seems we consumers are pressured to use less plastic. Yet more and more food is packaged in the stuff. How are we supposed to deal with that?
It’s another example of the onus of environmental responsibility is put on well intentioned consumers, when the manufacturers are the ones doing the real harm.
Love the lids! Your pantry looks great. I love teddie peanut butter jars and save/use them. Nothing beats glass jars.
I really like her pantry…it is very aesthetically pleasing. I think she has two kids, and several nieces and nephews who I imagine would enjoy the treats on the lower shelves. I don’t know if it’s practical for everyone’s space, or if everyone really has the space….but I think it’s pretty.
Me, I am a Ziplock bag woman. We’re in Florida and if you don’t seal everything there will be bugs. Given my families track record on breaking dishes, I don’t do glass storage ware. So Ziplock it is!!
Khloe really doesn’t organize her pantry. Such silly clickbait;(
I’m inspired to organize my pantry. Although I don’t keep much of a back stock except a Costco box of dog biscuits in it
Your cleaned and reorganized “pantry” looks very nice!
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