How to Organize Your Pantry in 7 Simple Steps and Reduce Chaos

Why you should organize your pantry

Why should the clothes and books get all the love? The dry goods and the nonperishables deserve your attention, if for no other reason than the fact that you should probably be taking regular inventory of your foodstuffs. But your kitchen will also feel so much better, and you’ll be more inspired to cook if all of your ingredients are fresh, accessible, and easy to find.

Plus, you’re probably wasting money buying vanilla extract for the third time because you didn’t know you already had a bottle stashed in there. And you’re likely also wasting food that expired or got stale because it was jammed behind the boxes and the cans.

It’s okay. We all do this. Especially when you’re short on space. Or time. Or both! Or you’ve got kids that don’t understand or respect your meticulous shelf engineering techniques when they’re simply trying to pour a bowl of cereal.

How to organize your pantry (step by step)

Any professional organizer will encourage you to use the following essential tips when organizing your pantry:

● Use bins and baskets

• Bins and baskets can maximize your space, make items more accessible, and are easy to rotate and move around (and wash and sanitize when you’re deep cleaning!).
• Bonus: We love to use a small lazy susan to store bottles of oils and sauces. It’s exactly what you didn’t know your pantry needed.

● Store dry goods in clear containers

• Because who doesn’t love that giant mason jar aesthetic? Turn your modest apartment kitchen into that farmhouse chic cookery you’ve always dreamt of.
• But seriously, we love clear containers! They keep your snacks fresher than they’d be with a measly chip clip or a box whose top was mutilated when your kids haphazardly tore into it.
• Clear containers allow you to take inventory in a glance, knowing when the flour is running low (or, worse, the sugar!) so you can add it to next week's grocery list.

● Group like with like

• Sure, spices go with spices. Sauces with sauces. But you can even micro-organize the like-with-likes into groups: most commonly used spices, ingredients for favorite and often cooked meals, stuff that goes into school lunches, backpacking and exercise snacks, coffee accessories, etc.

Okay, so where to begin? With a clean slate.

Step 1: Pull everything out of your pantry + wipe down shelves.

Yep, all of it. Give the shelves a hearty wipe down. Get rid of any dust or grime that’s accumulated (like from that sticky jar of molasses from the meatloaf sauce you made six months ago). You can use a Swiffer Duster with its extendable handle to reach the tippy top shelves and the back corners. Then give everything a once-over with a clean damp rag.

Be mindful of how you’re going to put everything back into the pantry, whether it’s in baskets, bins, or containers. Visualize it. Mentally reserve space for kitchen appliances that you might prefer to store in your pantry (if you’ve got the room!), rather than on the counter top. Because how nice is having a clear counter top?! If you’ve got shelf space, consider storing your pressure cooker, blender, French press and electric kettle in the pantry when you’re not actively using it.

Extra credit: Lay down shelf liners to manage (and get ahead of) slips, spills, or stains.

Step 2: Take pantry inventory

Go through each pantry item and check expiration dates. Toss anything that’s past its prime. Keep a list of items that you throw away so you can purchase fresh ones next time you’re at the store. This is also a good time to notice what staples you might be missing. Out of dill weed and mustard seed? You probably hadn’t noticed but were planning on making chicken salad next week. Add them to the list.

Step 3: Order + arrange pantry items

This is our favorite part. We find it particularly satisfying to sort through everything and group all of our baking items together, designate oils and vinegars to their respective shelves, and catalog the spices (maybe they’re in alphabetical order, like at the grocery store — hey, it’s your pantry!).

But also consider these important factors: frequency of use and daily routines.

Perhaps the nut butters are more accessible than the bread crumbs, but the loose leaf tea is especially easy to grab because you use it the most often. Now you’re catching on.

Step 4: Decant dry goods + snacks into clear containers (+ label them!)

Clear containers come in all shapes and sizes, can be mixed and matched and fit easily onto shelves. What’s more awkward than jamming bags and boxes all together into the pantry, where they basically cannibalize one another for prime shelf real estate? Clear containers give your pantry a shiny, happy, unrivaled “The Home Edit” look. Your mother-in-law will be so impressed.

Plus, decanting actually serves the admirable purposes of prolonging the life of your dried goods and keeping out pests.

Pro tip: We like to pick jars and containers with a wide mouth so that you can fit a measuring cup or scoop into them when necessary.