Pantry Organization
What’s hiding in your pantry? Whether you have an actual pantry or just cabinets that hold food items in your kitchen, you can use these tips. Your pantry organization goals should encompass:
Function - Pantry items are there to serve the cook in her or his cooking related activities.
Convenience - The chef should be able to “grab items and go.”
Usability - It’s all about being able to reach and use what you need when you need it. It’s also about storage. Store items in your pantry in efficient manners, and to keep them off of your countertops.
Visibility - See what you need in the pantry (or what’s missing from the pantry) at a glance.
Safety - Make sure nothing comes tumbling down on a family member’s head.
First things, first. Can you… …see well in your pantry? If food labels aren’t visible then perhaps you don’t have a well-lit pantry. Consider using stick-on portable lights to add interior lighting to your pantry. These take batteries. Find portable stick-on lighting in any drug store or major discount retailer.
Also, keep pantry interior walls and shelving painted bright colors such as white. Or use white contact paper (versus black or dark colors that absorb light).
Organize your pantry so that items are easily reachable. Better yet is if you can view all items in your pantry at glance (such as ones in the back). What works against these goals is a cramped pantry. A stuffed pantry isn’t necessarily a sign of a happy home and full stomach; it’s more likely a sign of a disorganized pantry, or a too small one. Or perhaps you like to shop just a little too often.
A pantry is for storage but also function. This is important to the cook in your household. The household chef needs to be able to “grab and go” from the pantry.
Plus it’s easier to maintain proper food supplies, inventory essentially, in a neat and organized pantry. That’ll save you money on potentially duplicate purchases. And it’ll save you headaches from missing ingredients at inconvenient times.
Safety is an issue too, particularly if your current pantry is cramped. You don’t want upper shelves stacked with so many weighty items that one comes crashing down on you or a family member. Same thing goes for items younger family members might reach for overhead. You probably want to put the heavy bags or containers of items on lower shelves, or even the floor of the pantry.
But it’s also a good idea to keep a step stool that folds away and hangs on the inside of the pantry door. Or put it nearby under a table or counter perhaps (out of the stumble over it, trip and fall zone).
Convenience also means putting things you use most frequently front and center. That means less often used items go higher and lower. And you want to be able to grab items without other items tumbling down around them. The easiest way to do the latter, plus increase visibility of items and maximize space in your pantry, is to use various size helper shelves and containers. Put your items on and in these in the pantry.
An example of a helper shelf for kitchen cabinets and pantries is:
These are examples of containers such as baskets, crates, plastic bins, translucent jars and more:
Black Plastic Storage Crate - Set of 3
You might find vertical racks helpful too (if you store baking pans or even lots of packets). For instance, one is:
Bakeware Holder by Made Smart®
But before you run out and start buying helper shelves and containers, know exactly what you need them to hold. That brings us to the next step…
…So where do you start?
Start by taking everything out of your pantry. Sort the items into like categories on your workspace (not in the pantry yet). Start with broad sort categories such as put all cans together; put all boxes together; put all packets together; and put all non-food items together.
Then get more specific within these categories such as put all soup cans together and separate them from all gravy cans. Put canned vegetables in another group. Put pet food in one category. Put spices adjacent to each other. Split non-food items such as picnic supplies, paper supplies and cleaning supplies into different groups.
You may have more categories. These are just examples of “categories” of items you may be keeping in your pantry or food closet. That’s not to say though that for instance, you’ll put the category of dry box cat food separate from the category of cans of cat food in the pantry. Instead, you may decide to put these two related categories adjacent to each other in the pantry in a pet food “zone.”
You may create these “zones” with other categories you formed too while sorting the pantry contents.
Do what makes sense to you. Think of it like filing paper in that sense. Just like with filing paper items, you want to place these pantry items where you know you’ll look first for them.
And that’s also why you’ll place most frequently used items front and center in your pantry. It’s convenient. Those are your “action” items.
Your “archive” items that you use less frequently can go on higher and lower shelves (or further in the back of the pantry if necessary). Put the tallest items furthest back or use some tiered shelving to help you see what’s back there. You might find cabinet shelving helpers that roll or slide in and out useful to reach items in the back of the pantry too.
Too many “archive” items? If you really don’t use them often, such as excessive rolls of paper towels you keep for replenishment, and your pantry is too full, you might move these items elsewhere. For instance, create a shelf in the garage for these essentially “bulk” purchases (like you’d get from Sam’s or Costco’s warehouse stores) that you pull from to replenish the pantry periodically.
But don’t overdue it or make too many of these purchases. Bulk purchases work best for nonperishable items like toilet paper and Styrofoam cups. Other items such as even canned vegetables and juice often have dates on them. Be aware of recommended keep or expiration dates before you stock up too much.
Final words of advice for pantry organization: First in, first out. That means if you have several of an item, use the one that expires sooner (which is likely the “first in”). If you have a few items that were probably impulse purchases that you won’t use, donate them to a food shelter (assuming they’re perfect to eat and that it’s just a case of “not for you”.)
Also, make it a habit to maintain your pantry organization scheme as you bring in new groceries. If family members have trouble remembering what goes where in your pantry scheme, just put some labels on the shelving and containers indicating the contents. You now have an organized pantry. Keep it that way.