Steps for Pantry Organization - SimpleStepsForLivingLife

Read on for Steps for Pantry Organization… dun dun duuunnnn!

For over 2 years, our pantry has been the bane of my existence.

Ok, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. Let’s face it though, I’m in the short club so having a 24″ deep pantry that goes floor to ceiling is a pain in the booty. Plus, we all use our food storage area daily right?

Here’s a couple of the before pictures…

Why, oh, why did I wait so long to organize and space plan my pantry?

Thank goodness I joined the KonMari cult. I don’t feel bad at all about feeding the Tidy Up machine. Really, I am the epitome of the newest Holderness Family video…

The main problem with my pantry is how deep it is. There is space that is just not accessible for my short arms. Plus, what food comes in 24 inch deep containers that would fit these 24 inch shelves?!

What is the best plan for a pantry like this?

Step 1: Organize all items

My pantry was a MESS! First things first, to organize a pantry everything needs to be removed. That’s exactly what I did. This is just a couple of the things I got out…

I threw away a bunch of expired things. Like items were grouped together. Being able to see all the different items separated into categories also helped me determine how much space would be required for each.

Step 2: Space Planning

After categorizing all of the food, you should have an idea of how much space you will need for the food for your home. This is also a good time to decide how to keep these items neat and tidy and where each item will be located.

Thing about how the food will be grouped together. Will the cans be stacked? Will the flour, sugar, and powdered sugar have bins? What about kids’ snacks? We have lots of snacks that are individually packaged. We also eat lots of popcorn, canned goods, pouch tuna, etc. This meant they need bins and lots of them.

Plus, these items needed to be easily accessible for my kids. All the baking goods on the other hand aren’t used very often at all, so the top shelf was perfect for these. And for this momma, my instant coffee and creamer needed to be right up front for me!

Step 3: Bins and containers

I’m a huge fan of bins and containers to keep things organized. See different ways I use photo boxes and also back of the door shoe organizers. The pantry storage options are endless depending on the space you are working in.

For our pantry organization, I used a left over magnetic desktop organizer for pouches of muffin mix or tuna. Plastic sweater boxes for chips. Mesh bins for snack cups and things like Little Debbie snacks. Another cage looking bin for potatoes. And then used Elfa hanging bins for canned goods, bottled syrup, cooking oil, raisens, koolaid packets, popcorn, etc.

Step 4: Creating accessible storage out of thin air

Can you see why having a 2 foot deep shelf was a pain considering all the different foods we use? I needed to be able to access all 24 inches of the shelves easily. For my pantry that meant utilizing the back of the doors. Not only did that make more of the space usable, but also helped me organize the smaller items.

Utilizing the doors also helped me to really figure out what foods we eat each day. Also helped me realized what we eat just on occasion or just used every once in a while like baking goods. The entire entire pantry was organized accordingly.

My go-to source for the doors was the Elfa hanging bins for this pantry organization. These are suppose to be hung using a bar that you can have cut to size and mounted but I decided to use ol’ Arkansee enginuity. AKA I used a screw and a couple washers to hold the things in place. Ohhh how I love these…

Now I can not only access what is in the bins on the door but the space these items would take up on the shelf are not blocking the next row of food.

It’s sooo much more organized. I can see all the canned goods now because most of those are in the door bins. It’s also much easier for my kids to reach snacks too. Yahooo for pantry organization and the KonMari cult! LOL

Pantry Organization saves time, money, AND sanity

I’m ashamed to have wasted so much food that expired in the last 2 years. Really, some of the food had been expired for 2 years. What a waste of resources, space, and money. If I had organized my pantry when I first moved in, much of this food probably wouldn’t have been thrown away. Plus, I’m not buying a bunch of one item that is actually tucked into the back of the shelves.

Pantry organization also saves my sanity. It’s no fun already trying to meal plan. Being able to see what food is actually in my pantry makes it sooo much easier to quickly put together dinner.

Time, the one commodity you can’t get back. Pantry organization has been so helpful in saving me time! From helping making meals quicker to having snacks accessible to the kids, time is being saved for my whole family. We are not rooting around like little piggies in a feed trough. Now, we can simply “shop” our pantry and easily find what we are looking for.

I know these steps sounds simple but you can do this too. Be prepared to spend some time working on this and look forward to meeting your goal. Just follow these simple steps for living life!