The dreaded kitchen pantry. Not only does it house your food, but it also houses a cluttered mess of unopened boxes, expired boxes lost to new boxes of food, and canned goods galore. The pantry has become one of the easiest and most convenient areas in the home to store food, but let’s face it, it can become quite the mess.
Below, we will provide you with a 1-2-3 step guide to help you gain control of your kitchen pantry and get it organized quickly without the stress.
Start to remove items from the pantry and set them on the table
Yikes! This may cause you to feel a bit of panic, but it is okay. You have to start somewhere, right? When you want to organize your kitchen pantry, the easiest way to start is to remove everything from the shelves and place them on the table so you can see them. Once the items are removed, spend some time cleaning the shelves and wiping them down.
Decide how you want to organize and categorize your pantry items
Again, this may sound difficult but once you start, you will find it helpful and get the hang of it. Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to organizing the pantry. For example, someone may want to organize one shelf for their kids’ snacks and another for pasta and another for canned goods and so on. This is really a personal decision and based on what works best for you.
However, if you do need some ideas, check out these categories to organize your pantry into:
- Spices
- Dry ingredients
- Pastas and grains
- Wet ingredients
- Canned foods
- Healthy food
- Snacks or junk food
- Breakfast food
Start to go through your items
One of the things you want to do is take some time to sort through the items that you already have. As much as it may surprise you, you likely have some expired foods in your pile that you just pulled from the cabinet. You want to toss these out and only keep food that is within date.
Once you have a system in place and your pantry is organized, you can place new foods behind older foods to ensure you do not lose items and find them way after their expiry date.
Glass containers and labels can help tremendously
If you are someone who uses certain items a lot, then you may want to consider investing in some glass containers to use. For example, you could have containers for pastas, flour, oats, beans, and any items that you use frequently.
If you do place these items into a container, do be sure to label the container, so that you always know what it is that you are grabbing.
Shelves and baskets are your friends
A blank pantry with no shelves is not a good pantry. If yours does not have any shelves, it is time to make a small investment – trust us, it is worth it!
You can utilize the shelves to store all of your goods and it makes storage so simple and convenient too. On those shelves, you can utilize additional storage items such as a lazy Susan for spices or baskets for loose items such as coffee bags, popcorn bags, chips, and similar.
Have an inventory list
Losing items in the pantry is a big pet peeve of ours and we can probably assume it is of you too. Pantries can quickly become overstocked and cluttered, especially when you do not know what you have inside of them.
To help you combat this, we recommend that you have an inventory list of what is in the pantry. This helps you know what is there and what is needed.
Ready to get started? We know you will have fun!
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