Pantry Closet Organization Ideas – In this post: If you’ve always wanted one of those perfectly organized functional pantries, you’ll love this guide to organizing a kitchen pantry.⇒
Turns out my daughter hadn’t seen it yet so they both stood wondering through the open door.
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To be honest, I’m a pretty decent person, so the before picture isn’t the disaster you’d expect. But apparently the transformation was significant enough to elicit such a response from 2 young adult women.
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Below you can see what the pantry looked like the day I decided I couldn’t take it anymore.
You can see that I have tried to create regions and keep duplicate products more or less next to each other. I tend to keep things in rows so the general setup is organized, but the only rows that stay in tact are rarely used items. Instead, the things we use all the time are almost falling off the shelves (I’m looking at your hubby’s pretzel chips!)
The breaking point is a combination of what happens upstairs and on the floor. As I have mentioned many times, the collection of plastic bags drives me crazy. I rarely use it and I certainly don’t need it much longer. Add to that the water bottles on the floor that look like they have started to come out of the cupboard and you have a recipe for a much needed change!
What we need is a system that not only encapsulates the goods, but is easy to maintain on a daily basis. Any organizational effort is only as good as its ease of use. If it is too difficult to put something in the designated container, the system will break.
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I am happy to say that the photo below was taken this week while the incident with my daughter’s friend happened in the summer. It’s true! We have been able to maintain this system for 6 months and it looks as good as the week I set it up.
So what is the reason for the success? Here are my tips for simple and functional kitchen pantry organization.
As you can see, our pantry is quite simple. It’s not a full pantry with wall-to-wall shelving, but it’s not a small kitchen cabinet either. It is a two-door cabinet with 6 wire shelves. I really hate wire shelving, but I chose to spend the money on a useful container instead of investing in better shelving. I had put plexiglass inserts on the shelves when we first moved in, so things wouldn’t fall out. No doubt the pantry will look cleaner with solid white shelves, but that will have to wait.
My most important tip is to spend time planning. Don’t just run out and buy a container and hope it fits your space and what you want to store. I spend some time staring at our messy pantry, because it’s the best illustration of how we use our space.
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I not only measure the space, but also what we use. Figuring out how many containers of a certain width will fit on your shelves is easy enough, but determining whether they can hold the food you want to store is the real key. I created detailed sketches with goals that I kept updating as the plan evolved.
I decided I would use 3 types of containers: an airtight pop top container, an open plastic container and a hyacinth basket. The decision is influenced by several different things, including the easiest way to store the items, the sizes available, as well as how they will look in the pantry. There is no denying that the use of coherent containers gives the pantry a neater appearance.
For this reason I decided I would use one type of storage on each shelf, choosing hyacinth baskets for the bottom 2 surfaces, plastic bins for the middle two, top bins for the eye level shelves and a bit of a combination of the above.
I think a lot of people are scared of the pop top container that you pour your food into. First, it can be expensive, but more importantly, I think some people fear that it will be too cumbersome to use. This is exactly the reaction I got from hubby who told me it was too hard to get his beloved pretzel chips. I went to the pantry, took out a container and opened it in a flash. We laughed out loud and I haven’t heard a complaint since.
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On the other hand, a pop top container can make your life easier. You can see what’s inside, food stays fresh and you can organize it, maximizing your pantry space. Keeping it at eye level also creates the neatest pantry.
I prefer to use this for items that come in boxes (as opposed to jars or cans). This is where I spend the most time planning, studying my existing pantry and planning the sizes I need. Before I buy anything, I plan everything out and estimate what will fit in each size container. Then I put it on my counter with the boxes before pouring anything.
I would avoid buying a kit and instead buy the exact size you need. Buy them on sale and save money that way. You will waste more money if you have extra containers that are not the size you need.
The first time you set it up is the effort you’ll use the most. After that, it is easy to maintain. I never fill more than one or two in a week (the pretzels always get crunchy!) and I just stick the expiration date on the back of the container where it won’t be visible unless necessary.
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If you’ve read any of my other organization posts, you know that I’m a big proponent of multiple facilities. I tend to be brand loyal, so for things I use often, I like to keep an extra or two in stock. The bonus of this practice is that you put similar items next to each other in your pantry and they look nicer. This is especially true for clear plastic bins, which otherwise don’t look much different than putting things directly on the shelf.
I mentioned above that I redid our kitchen pantry about 6 months ago, but I didn’t actually finish it until recently because I didn’t know what to do with the upper shelves. First, there’s the question of the shopping bags we keep and then use for the trash. I throw away all the plastic bags because I don’t use them (and usually instruct the shipper not to even bring them), but I still have all the folded paper bags to deal with. They fit perfectly in a hyacinth pot but are too tall to stand. I ended up turning the bin on its side, which was a very good solution as the bag was more accessible than it would have been upright.
On the opposite end of the same shelf are some less frequently used cleaning supplies that we don’t have under the sink, and that’s where I keep the ones we use all the time. I’m not sure why it took me so long to come to this conclusion, but I ended up choosing an open plastic barrel with a handle that made it easy to pull down and reach back when needed.
This is basically one of my defining principles and one that I adhere to in all of my closets. To avoid the mess of things piling up on the floor, I set rules for storage
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Loose on the floor. This is the perfect place for water or other drinks, neatly arranged in a hyacinth container. It’s easier to hold than when they fall on the floor and roll around, and it looks better. I also took the time to make sure all the labels were facing the same direction, again keeping the duplicates together.
This may be less important to those of you who are taller than me, but having a small stool that I can easily pull out is important to reach items on the top shelf. Nothing declutters a closet faster than throwing things on the top shelf because you can’t reach them. Note, poop is only useful because you can get it easily. This means nothing before and nothing on it. Ever.
It goes without saying that you should throw out expired food, items that came in gift baskets that you won’t use, and things that no one in the family likes.
I love having a pantry that stays organized week after week without constant cleaning! This is my real pantry that we are
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