I’m a proud organizing aficionado (always have been!) and I can often be found pursuing various sites for more tips and tricks to try out in my own home, but I also know when it’s time to call in for support. I’m not ashamed to admit that I need to outsource help at times, because it can often be hard for me to see past our own belongings and our own setups, struggling to envision any other way than what is.
So when it came time to attack our pantry (and yes, I say attack because it was getting out of hand), I called on my friend, a fellow designer and organizer, Candace of House of Paige. She’s fantastic and I love picking her brain when it comes to organizing challenges. I needed some help taking our pantry to the next level, implementing systems that would work long term and that was easy to maintain. Because while I can tidy up the space time and time again, with every intention of keeping it that way, it wasn’t long before chaos hit again. Simply put, our current system wasn’t working.
Candace and I had a virtual call, and she shared a sheet that provided the ideas she had and some products she recommended implementing! It was really helpful!
Here’s our tips for tidying up and organizing your pantry so it shines and successfully serves its purpose.
- First steps first: take everything out of your pantry and clean the shelves.
- Take inventory of everything you own and throw out all expired items.
- Group similar items so you know how much of each “category” you have.
- Categories we have: pasta, baking, kid’s snacks, chips & crackers, canned goods, spices, oils & vinegars, nut butters & honey.
- Source containers that you both love and work well for you to decant and store all dry goods.
- Label and decant items into containers.
- Make sure to put an expiration date on the bottom of every container.
- Helpful tip: I like to put the instructions for things like rice, oatmeal, etc. on the bottom or side of the containers because I can never seem to remember how long to cook each of the ingredients when it comes time to prepare meals.
- Group individually packaged items in baskets for easy access on the go, such as Pirates Booty, and other snacks. I don’t love individually packaged products, but sometimes they are necessary with kids.
Items I used to organize my pantry:
It’s not perfect (i.e. that bottom shelf still needs some love), but it is working beautifully for us. We maintain it by taking everything out and putting it back once every few months so that we can keep the cabinets clean and check exp. dates on the reg. What questions do you have about organizing?
While I love organizing so much, I am no expert, but I’m happy to chat with you if you have an organizing project you need help with. 🙂
Check out more posts all about our home here!