With the changing of the season and the holidays upon us, I thought I would share a few tips and tricks to get your pantry in tip-top shape. I don’t know about you but I love cooking more in the fall - big pots of comfort food, yum! When your pantry is organized, you can easily see what you have on hand, what you’re running low on, and locate what you need in a snap.
Categorize:
Pull your items out, check the expiration date, and sort into categories. For example: dry goods (such as beans and pasta), cans (soups, veggies, sauces), breakfast foods, snacks, and condiments. Group all like items together, I like to further categorize snacks into salty and sweet. If you love to bake, keep all of your baking items together. If your family is into trying new salsas or condiments, keep them together, and so on.
Contain:
There are so many fabulous ways to contain your items - clear storage, wicker, or metal baskets, to name a few. Once you determine the aesthetic look you prefer, make sure that you can actually see your items. If you really like the look of opaque storage, such as a wicker basket, be sure to label it so that everyone knows where to find what they’re looking for and check contents often so you’ll know when to replace. It’s best to remove prepackaged items from their original boxes so you can see what you’re running low on. This is also handy for grabbing snacks on the go.
I prefer to decant dry goods like rice, beans, oatmeal, and pasta. Not only does it give your pantry a more high-end look, your items stay fresher longer and you can see what you have on hand (do I sound like a broken record here?). This can ensure that you don’t have to make a last minute grocery run or that you buy duplicates.
As you place items into their storage bins, remember to keep like items with like and categorize into a system that makes sense for you and your family, such as all breakfast cereals, oatmeal, bars, and granola together. If you have kids, it’s helpful to keep snacks on shelving that’s accessible for them (I try to keep less-healthy choices out of plain sight). In the end, even if everything looks neat and tidy stored in their respective containers, if it isn’t easy for you and your family to manage, you’ll need to tweak things until it works. If you know that you won’t decant rice or pasta after your grocery trips, don’t sweat it! As long as your pantry items have a “home” so that you can find what you need quickly, that’s the ultimate goal.
These are a few products that I have used and loved, the Neat Method items are on my wishlist (so gorgeous).
https://neatmethod.com/collections/labeling/products/label-holder-sets https://neatmethod.com/collections/canisters-jars/products/canisters
