Check Out These 7 Tips on Organizing Your Pantry

The kitchen: It’s the place where your family gathers for meals, conversation, and bonding. It’s also where you spend time preparing nutritious meals and snacks and where you store the ingredients that you bring into your home. The kitchen has been called the “heart of the home,” but when disorganization takes over, it can be difficult to have good feelings and a healthy routine when it comes to the kitchen. Getting your kitchen pantryorganized can lead to better interactions in the kitchen. You’ll feel more positive about cooking, it will be easier to menu-plan and put groceries away, and a calmer you equals a calmer, more open family. Here are seven tips on whipping your pantry into shape.

Depending on the size and shape of your pantry, you might have a hard time easily accessing and seeing parts of it. Deep corners are one potential problem. Another is shelving that’s too high. It might even be difficult to get to the items stored on the floor, particularly if your pantry is deep or if you are unable to comfortably bend or squat.

At Custom Storage Solutions, we have pull-out shelves that allow you to pull a shelf toward you to see what’s on it, making it simpler to access items that are stored in the back. We can also install the shelving lower if you can’t reach the items currently on the top shelf. If floor access is an issue, you might consider using bins on casters or other solutions that make it easier for you to get to all of your items.

Everyone has a pantry organizing system that works best for them. If your pantry is disorganized, it might help to separate items by type. What this looks like can vary; you might separate the items by how they’re packaged (boxed goods, bagged goods, canned goods, jars, etc.) or by how you use them (breakfast items, savory items, sweet items, baking items, and so on).

It can seem overwhelming to come up with a whole new system, so think about what is currently working. Does everyone in your family know that the breakfast cereal is on the third shelf in the middle and that cans of soup are on the bottom shelf toward the left? Keep those items there and take out the things that are frequently misplaced. Those are the foods and packages that might need a different home in the pantry.

When organizing your pantry, it is usually best to put lighter items on the top and heavier items on the bottom. Following this rule of thumb means that you won’t be trying to navigate a 10-lb bag of potatoes down from above your head. You might try putting paper goods like napkins and paper plates at the very top of the pantry; even if you can’t reach them well, pulling these items down won’t put you at risk of injury if they end up falling. Heavy items like bottles of juice, cans, and jars are better off closer to the floor, where they will do less damage if they do fall over.

If you keep your seasonings or small packets of noodles or gravy mix in your pantry, you know that it’s easy to lose track of these items. Get some bins or baskets to keep them in and separate them by type. If you know that all of the ramen is in the red basket on the second shelf, then you won’t have to rummage through the rest of the pantry. Also, this will prevent small items from getting stuck behind a shelf or being another item or from slipping down between wire slats.

One important part of keeping the pantry neat and tidy is making sure it’s clean. There are some items in a typical pantry that can be drippy or sticky, so it’s a good idea to determine how you will keep everything wiped up. First, make it a habit to wipe off bottles of honey or maple syrup before putting them back. Secondly, consider keeping oil and similar ingredients on a tray; this way, if you end up dripping any, you can simply wash the tray instead of having a sticky or oily mess on the shelves themselves. Finally, wipe down your shelves periodically to keep them dust-free. If you take just five minutes to do this on shopping day, that’s enough to make a difference.

One frustration that many Ohio and Michigan homeowners have is that sometimes it is difficult to see inside the pantry simply because the lighting is poor. If your kitchen lighting doesn’t shine adequately into the pantry, install an overhead light within the pantry itself. You can even get battery-operated lighting if you don’t want to get involved with an electrical project. A few lights that you tap to turn on can brighten up dark corners and make it easier to see all of your ingredients. Or contact an electrician in the Toledo areato help you with a more permanent solution.