Yesterday, a sweet friend called and wanted to “see” my pantry and get help with hers. So we hopped on FactTime and had a great time visiting after the pantry tour. It is so nice to connect with friends right now! It made me think I should repost These 5 Tips for a Perfectly Organized Pantry!
This is another project that was a long time in the making. I had made several attempts to organize our pantry over the past 14 years but none of them have stuck. Once again, Tonia and Sorted Out to the rescue!
As you can tell, I do have a walk-in pantry but it is by no means very large. It serves as home to all of my small electrical appliances, large collection of cookbooks, the girls art supplies…Oh, yes, and food!
Because we mostly eat healthy, fresh foods that I keep in my very large fridge, I don’t really have that many dry or canned goods typically. During quarantine and Safer at Home, that has changed! I have added quite a few dry goods and snacks for the girls. I’m so glad I had added a few of the storage bins in February to help maximize space. It still leaves a good amount of space for the other things I need to store here. But containing and organizing all those things had never been very successful until I called Tonia.
Sorted Out had the perfect solution, of course. I never would’ve thought to put boxes of pancake mix or cake mix in these bins but it makes them so much easier to access. I’m also able to keep them organized when I have lots of other hands rifling through things in the pantry.
We reused the woven baskets where I store paper goods, lunch boxes and over-the-counter medicine. Even just putting them in a different configuration and on different shelves helped gain more space.
Even simple changes like these make it easier to stay organized and actually be inspired to get in here and find what I’m looking for or quickly identify things I need to pick up at the store.
5 Tips for A Perfectly Organized Pantry from Tonia Tomlin at Sorted Out:
- Time to Purge. Set a realistic time aside to organize your pantry is the first step. Then, take out items in your pantry in sections, so you don’t get overwhelmed and discard anything that is stale and expired, I would recommend doing this every 6 months in the pantry.
- Clean it out. Wipe down all shelves, walls, drawers, sweep out all areas. If you need to install new shelving, hooks or wall mounted items, this is a good time to do that. Going vertical with your wall space is a good idea, especially for spice storage.
- Consistent Containers. Use new canisters that are all in the same organizing family, to hold any dry goods such as sugar and flour, and label them with a label maker or chalk labels. For small items, snacks, bars, salad toppings, nuts should go in an open bin for easy access.
- Shop in your pantry. Group like items together in the pantry as if you were shopping at the grocery store. Pasta, rice, canned goods together, Mexican Food, Asian Food, breakfast section, crackers, and snacks. Depending on your food categories. It’s also a good idea to label the shelves so other family members are on the same page.
- Hard to reach items. Consider using a lazy Susan for bulky, or heavy items such as oil bottles, vinegars, soy sauce and teriyaki sauce, this makes it easier to reach. Store all appliances at a lower level so you can access them.
Below is a boutique of the items that we used for this project. I hope it inspires you to make a few simple changes and organize your pantry as well. You can see other projects that I have worked with Sorted Out on here: my home office and my master closet. We’ve got another fun one in the works so stay tuned!
Xo
Alicia
Click the Boutique Images below to shop!
I just started using those oxo style containers in my pantry and I love it!