What to Keep In Your Organized Pantry

Have you ever walked into your pantry and wondered “where are my ….?” while rearranging cans and jars to see if you can find what you want, meanwhile growing more and more frustrated with the clutter. The lack of a system in a pantry that is constantly being moved around is so frustrating and what many of my clients encounter all the time. Luckily, I made a list of what to keep in your pantry and included some tips for organizing these items for easy access.

Essential items to keep in an organized pantry

Canned food: Sort the cans and jarred food by type, veggies, pasta, legumes, and tomato sauce. Using an organizer like tier shelves works nicely.  But you can also use a canned organizer like this one.

Pasta and Rice products: Group the pasta and rice products together. I find that boxes of post can easily fall over so placing them a a clear bin like this one works well too.

Paper products: like paper towels. Make a place on the shelf for paper towels to remove these items from the floor and, at a glance, to quickly determine if you need these items. Check out this handy paper towel holder for a pantry shelf.

Table clothes and cloth napkins: You can hang them on a towel rack on the door or place them on the shelf with the cloth napkins.

If you have enough room in your pantry to hold these items helps give you space back in your dining room or kitchen drawer. These hangers allows you to hang the table clothes in your pantry or hallway closet.

Platters and party supplies: paper napkins, paper plates, forks, knives, etc… Keep all the party supplies together for quick inventory for your next party. Using something like this to stand up the platters makes it easier to retrieve with less risk of injuring yourself when getting the platter from the bottom.

Small Appliances: These items are usually not used often. Place them in one location in your pantry. Not too high if they are heavy. If you have wire shelving in your pantry, using these plastic shelf liners will help keep your small appliances from falling into the openings.

Tips: Buy extra supplies: Buy extra supplies to save money and store these items in your pantry. Some items that last for weeks are cereal, snacks, herbs, spices, extra juice, water, soda, and condiments.

Now, where should you place these items?

The image below shows which shelf would be best used for which item. Role of thumb is heavy items and frequently used items should be closer to the floor. Lighter items and infrequently used items can be stored on the top shelf.

To help maintain the organized pantry, don’t forget to label the areas! Label each shelf section to describe the type of items that below there. This will make it easier for you to remember where each category is placed.

And, finally, remember that each pantry should be designed for each family. No one pantry will be the same. The goal is to make the pantry easy to get what you want and maintain the system.  If your pantry isn’t easy to maintain, then it should be modified and simplified.  Think simply and don’t worry about making it supper categorized. I hope this helps you get your pantry organized.

Let’s continue the conversation, please share your tips on organizing your pantry in the comments below.  I would love to hear from you.

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