Mini Cellar Shelf on the Pantry

Growing up, my mom's house had a cold cellar in the basement to store potatoes and onions.  As an adult, I usually keep them in a crate on the floor of my pantry.  But our house doesn't have a pantry, so I made baskets for them on my bookcase to pantry.

The metal baskets are bathroom accessories I bought at Lowes.  I chose metal baskets to allow the veggies to breathe (hopefully not rot as that has happened and wreaks!), but it also kind of reminded me of a metal basket to collect eggs.  Although I've never collected eggs on a farm, I imagine it being done with a metal basket.

To make the little signs, I just drilled holes in scrap 1/4" MDF I had from making the pantry doors.

Painted them white with craft paint, then printed the font I wanted to mimic.

Then I painted on the words, if you look closely you can see they're not perfect like vinyl would be, but good enough for me.

The I used jute to tie them to the baskets.

What's in the white metal pail?

GARLIC!

I didn't make a sign, because the bucket is rounded and I guess I'll just leave it plain white.

The pantry is now finished, with the fabric backing on the top shelf, I put a stack of my most used cook books, fancy glasses etched with our names and wedding dates, and the thrift store vase thing that holds adaptors to the Shark vacuum.

I really do use this bookcase as the pantry too.  We really needed the extra storage!

I also wasn't sure if my son would be into the potatoes and onions with them being so low and within his reach, but he hasn't touched them.  If they'd been candy it would have been a different story.

Here's the finished pantry.