Simple Kitchen Decluttering Ideas: How to Organize your Pantry

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Add a Pantry Storage Cabinet

A pantry storage cabinet can extend your kitchen storage. It allows you to organize your cereal boxes, dinner sets, bottles, cook books, and more. Some cabinets are equipped with shelves to hold kitchen accessories of different sizes. Pantry storage cabinets not only add style to your pantry, they also add capacity. You can also display some decorative items on top of yours.

Use Pantry Organizers to Declutter

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Decluttering your pantry helps you to plan meals easily and know what’s missing when shopping for groceries. Take stock of what you have, list the items you use most, and those you rarely use. Some unused items can clutter your pantry and make it the last place you want to be. Use closet racks to organize cabinets, a tissue box to hold plastic bags, T-molding to hold stemware, and angled shelving to organize spices. You can also use small spring-tension rods to create additional shelves.

Draw Inspiration from Kitchen Organization Ideas

Kitchen organization ideas can serve as inspiration for pantry organization. Just as you do in your kitchen, place your cookbooks in open shelves, arrange items by frequency of use, and group similar objects together. Place items you use frequently within easy reach and those you use occasionally on higher shelves. Put wrapping and plastic bags together in a drawer so you don’t have a hard time storing leftovers. Lastly, stack nest plastic containers and their tops in the same drawer to make them readily available.

Copy Your Closet Design

Your closet has a place for everything: folded clothes, hanging ones, shoes, and even bags. That’s why you don’t have to spend a long time looking for shoes before you go out. That’s how your pantry should be. Designate a place for everything to ensure you don’t have to spend a lot of time looking for things. You can put canned foods in one section, bottles in another, and pet food in another.

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The pantry is usually one of the most disorganized areas of a home. Don’t let your pantry be a place where clutter resides. Put it in order with these kitchen decluttering ideas. You’ll never be frustrated when looking for items.

What kitchen organization tips can you share with us?

With warmer weather just around the corner, it’s about time to shake off those cobwebs and start spring cleaning. While the main rooms of your house might require the most attention, it’s important not to forget about smaller spaces such as your pantry. Using these pantry organization tips, you can spruce things up in just a few minutes and develop a system that will help keep things orderly all year long.

Image via: Kerri Robusto Interiors

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Completely Clean Out your Pantry

The first step toward an organized pantry is being aware of what you already have. Start by taking each item out and checking the expiration date. Toss any foods that are past their prime and consider donating items that are still good, but you know you won’t use. While the shelves are still bare, take the opportunity to give things a good scrub down with wet paper towels. You’ll be surprised how much cleaner things will feel afterwards.

Invest In Storage Solutions:

Whether you have a walk-in butler’s pantry or just a few cabinets, odds are you don’t have as much space as you would like. Make the most out of every inch by investing in storage solutions such as bins, raisers, and lazy susans. Get creative by repurposing things like back-of-the-door shoe racks to store snacks or a magnetic board to hang your spices. Whenever possible, clear storage is best because it allows you to see everything you have at a glance.

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Don’t Fight Filing:

As weird as it may sound, creating a filing system for your pantry goods will help you work a lot faster in the kitchen. Use your storage solutions to group items by type – put rice next to pasta and other boxed starches, etc. Place foods you eat everyday on the lower shelves, while putting lesser-used ones higher up. Finally, if you buy more than one of the same item at a time, take a cue from the supermarket and place foods with the nearest expiration date up front. That way, you have the least chance of wasting foods that have expired.

Consider Going Digital:

This one is more to help with ongoing organization. If you’re the type have information available with the swipe of a finger, consider making a spreadsheet of all your pantry foods. Create a sheet that has five columns: food group, item name, quantity, and expiration date. Then, fill in a row for each for each individual package. With an easily-updatable spreadsheet at your fingertips, grocery shopping will get a whole lot easier.

Image via: W. David Seidel, AIA – Architect

Hectic days and buy schedules can make chores like sprucing up the pantry fall to the end of your to-do list. However, if you have a few minutes for spring cleaning, these pantry organization tips will help save your family time and money.

Do you have an essential pantry organization tip that we need to know about? For more kitchen pantry organization tips on Stagetecture, click here.

Last weekend I sat down to sort out my ever increasing grocery bills when I realized that I was buying way more than what was being consumed in my household. This is when I shook up and dragged myself to achieving good pantry organization. I was amazed at the clutter I had collected. I had twos and in some cases threes of stuff that I did not even use.

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The whole incident made me realize the importance of maintaining a clutter free pantry. Here are simple steps to help you get the pantry in order:

1. Pantry organization – Start with a clean slate

Set aside a day in your calendar for organizing the pantry. Pull out everything from the shelves and place them together in one place. Give your shelves a good clean with soapy water and air them out for some time while you sort. Replace the old shelf liners with new ones.

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2. Sorting and prepping

Start by sorting out any expired food items and place them in a large garbage bag to avoid mixing them up again. Next group your food products according to their categories. So place all the cereals together, spices together and so on. Once again sort out anything that can be donated and bag these separately.

If you use glass canisters or plastic jars, label them clearly.

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3. Space planning your pantry

The secret to a well laid out and functional pantry is proper space planning. Once you have categorized the food items in your pantry, think of items that you use every day, items that you use occasionally and items that are very rarely used.

Place the heaviest and the bulkiest items that are difficult to lift in the bottom – most shelf. This includes bulk purchases that you make from Costco.

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Next place the most frequently used food products in the middle shelves. You can further segregate these according to their use, for example, keep the baking supplies together and club the specialty foods like organic or gluten-free together. Also, keep a separate tray of soon to expire food stuff on the middle shelves so you  remember to use these quickly. These should be at eye level and easily accessible.

Finally place the food products that you rarely use on the top shelves. You can also place food stuff that you would rather stay away from like a bag of potato chips or ice cream topping on the top.

Once your pantry organization has been achieved with the food items you already have, make a list of what you need buy in order to restock. A well-organized pantry will help you save hundreds of dollars per year in grocery bills.

For more organization ideas on Stagetecture, click here.

Careful organization and a few personal touches to your kitchen pantry can minimize waste and maximize savings. Most people do not mind adding extra functional space to their kitchen pantry despite having a big kitchen with enough storage space. With minimal amount of shelving and storage provided, pantry is probably the most ignored space in the kitchen. However, with these following tricks, you can add space that is more functional to your small pantry as well as make this storage bonanza one of your favorite features.

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Organize the Items

Before the days of built-in cabinetry, majority people used to use kitchen-adjoined pantry for keeping their dishes, linens, and dry foods. Though modern kitchen has started to ignore it, the addition of a pantry will bring nothing except benefit. Even if you have enough storage space, you can use the pantry for corralling the surprise packages of paper towels, snacks, and pasta. For easy pick up, place frequently used items on the front of the shelf. Group the items like canned foods or cooking ingredients and keep them separately.

Remove Unnecessary Items

While a kitchen pantry has adequate space, many households use it as a catchall for storing odd items. Just remove the recycle bins, trash cans, bulk beverages, and pet food bags and place them somewhere else. Free up the pantry space by installing sink trash cans and recycle bins. Lock the bulk items in airtight bins and move them to laundry room or garage.

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Amplify Storage Space

Install deeper or wider shelving if your existing shelves do not hold enough items. Opt for different types of storage options throughout the pantry instead of using only one type of shelving. Install shelves or use hooks on the backside of the pantry door for storing condiments and spices or hanging measuring cups and spoons. By using the door, you can free up the shelf space. Pull out drawers are also good for organized storage of small kitchen appliances. You can use every inch of your pantry by thinking a little bit more creatively. The top and bottom of pantry walls often remain unused. Make them useful by adding inexpensive wire shelving. Attach over-the-door hangers for hanging grocery bags. Take waterproof, pest-proof bins, put heavier items into them, and keep them on the floor.

Utilize Hanging Wire Storage

Instead of using shelving, installing hanging wire storage on wall space will give a pantry a versatile look. You can use this storage option for hanging aprons, pans, pots, and big utensils.

An organized kitchen pantry can help you a lot during cooking. Efficient use of pantry space will allow you to keep all the necessary items into one place and find them quickly in times of need.

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