Expert Guide: How to Organize a Pantry for Efficiency & Style
The kitchen pantry is one of the most used spaces in your home. Which explains why when you don’t have a process for decluttering, organizing or maintaining it — things can go sideways + get out of control quickly. And this can become a source of frustration.
Truth bomb my friend, if you’ve got a kiddo running around the house like us, then the pantry can go from “tidy + clean” to “what natural disaster occurred in here?” in a hurry amiright?!?!
We love them but sticky fingers + not having a specific place to put the cereal or chips back can definitely put a damper on the organized home vibe we’re after *wink*
The good news is… it’s not difficult to wrangle all of that randomness that exists inside your pantry into a streamlined + functional area in your home (that anyone can follow. PROMISE).
Not to mention, not only does decluttering + organizing actually benefit your health but we’ve never met anyone who’s snubbed their nose at a beautifully organized + functional kitchen pantry — betting you won’t be the first 🙂
After designing + organizing more kitchen pantries than we can count over the last nearly two decades — we’re sharing the absolute best ways to organize a pantry in your kitchen.
One that doesn’t just look great + work well but a pantry that’s so simple even your kids (and your Bonnie or Clyde) can help keep it intact.
The Importance Of An Organized Pantry
An organized pantry isn't just about making a pretty space in your home; it's the key to a kitchen that works smoothly and efficiently.
Having an organized and functional pantry is Elegant Simplicity® for your daily life *wink* because it makes everything a bit easier and improves your overall happiness. Getting your pantry in order saves time, cuts down on wasted food + has you feelin’ less stressed out :)
Time Savings
A well-organized pantry isn't just about being neat — it's about reclaiming valuable time for yourself.
Research from the National Association of Professional Organizers reveals that people can spend up to an hour each day looking for things they've misplaced. Now, think about it — when’s the last time you spent 20-minutes looking for something in your email inbox, your cloud storage or better yet in your home.
In the kitchen, this lost time frequently occurs as you sift through a disorganized pantry searching for the right ingredients.
By ensuring everything in your pantry has a designated spot, you can drastically reduce the time spent hunting for items, streamlining your meal prep process and giving you back those precious minutes for what truly matters.
Reduced Food Waste
Tackling food waste is more than an environmental imperative. Being conscious of wasting food is a practical step towards a more mindful + efficient daily-life.
Now, I’m not gonna lie the next statistic is kind of like reading a textbook in grade school *wink* but it’s worthy of you reading. The USDA reports that each year, 30-40% of the food supply goes to waste. That’s a shocking number when we consider how many people don’t have food each day.
If we’re truly creating a home that’s Elegant Simplicity® we know it’s not just about “what” but about “why” + could there be a better “why” for reducing waste than this?
A significant portion of this food waste can be traced back to our own kitchens, where items get lost in the chaos of cluttered pantries, leading to the unnecessary repurchase and spoilage of food. By organizing your pantry you enhance visibility and accessibility, making it easier to utilize what you already have and avoid waste.
Stress Reduction
The mental toll of living in cluttered spaces is profound + we’ve written ALL about the affects of clutter.
For what it’s worth (and as ridiculous as this is about to sound) a disorganized pantry that lacks systems + or a place to put things — ends up feeling less like an inviting kitchen + instead, more like a nagging reminder that failure lurks just over the horizon. It heightens your stress levels + it weighs you down.
On the flip side, a well-organized space fosters feelings of tranquility of your home. In the realm of the kitchen, a neatly arranged pantry can shift meal prep from a source of tension to an enjoyable, relaxed activity.
Not to mention… Having a clear system for where each ingredient is stored simplifies cooking, lightening the cognitive burden of managing your pantry's inventory.
Remove Everything
If you truly want to give this space of your home a much needed makeover, you’ll need to start with a blank slate (+ a clean one).
The best way to get organized + accomplish this is to remove absolutely e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g from your pantry. If this sounds like quite a bit of work, well… it is + we do this for our organizing members :)
Our goal is to empty every nook, cranny, shelf, bin + basket and temporarily moving everything onto the counter, the dining table, or heck, if space is limited the floor will work wonders. This way, we’re able to quickly wipe things down + with a clean slate, start thinking objectively about:
how your family already uses the pantry
what works well currently
what doesn’t work well
and where might items fit back in a more logical manner
But you know us, we’re slightly obsessed with being tidy + as efficient as possible so…
Create A Throw Away Pile
As you pull everything out keep an eye out for:
expiration dates
items that are stale
or for anything that’s gotten crushed into a million tiny pieces.
And for the sake that these items are no longer safe or usable create a throw-away pile.
After all, the last thing you want is to walk into a room only to find your toddler sitting front + center, watching Curious George while eating crushed apple chips on your sofa *wink*
Create A Donate Pile
Another thing to be mindful of as you’re removing items from your pantry is:
are there any items that can be donated to a local food bank
Without fail you’re bound to stumble across things that are perfectly edible but haven’t used like applesauce, canned tuna, unopened crackers, granola bars, cooking oils or even the rice paper wrappers you bought for making sushi at home –– but never did!
Although they haven’t expired it creates a random hodge-podge of items you don’t use frequently enough to justify carving out precious space for them to live in your newly organized pantry.
So, what do you do with them? Start a donation pile that can be taken to a food donation drop-off.
Organize Your Pantry — By Zone
Now that every last crumb, jar, canned food + cereal box has been removed from the pantry area, start grouping everything into like-categories. Again, you can do this on the floor or anywhere else you have an open space where things can be laid out + are visible.
The main objective of sorting + grouping like items is to create clarity around what you have + what you need.
Often this part can feel overwhelming but think in terms of how you cook, eat, what items you’ll want to restock often — baking, canned items, small package items (like beans, pastas, etc) and large items (like chips, cereals, etc).
Psst… Here’s a quick guide on how we typically help clients categorize their pantry.
Baking
Large Snacks
Small Snacks
Grains, Pastas + Smaller Shelf Stable Foods (like condiments)
As you begin the process of exploring the best way to put things back into your kitchen pantry you want to consider zones for your pantry.
Which of the categories fit for what you have in your pantry but also work well for your lifestyle? In other words, does it make more sense for you to organize your pantry by food, cooking category (like above) or is it more efficient to consider organizing your pantry shelves by lifestyle or purpose?
Breakfast Foods
Lunch Foods
Dinner Foods
Snacks
Quick Appetizers for entertaining
A zone for you, your spouse, or your kids
Specialty Cooking Appliances
Maybe it’s a combination. And that is totally fine.
While we’ve organized hundreds of pantries over the last decade + a half — they were different shapes, sizes + locations + each one was always unique to how our clients live.
Likewise, you might use some of these grouping ideas but not all. And that’s okay.
Remember the pantry is one of the most heavily used spaces in your home so regardless, we want the items you reach for most often to be grouped together in zones that make sense + are well within reach.
ORGANIZING TIP: carefully decide how much space in your pantry you’re going to dedicate for each area.
Containerize Your Pantry
With Tetris like skills, at this point of the “organizing your pantry game” you understand exactly what’s currently in your pantry + what items you either want or need. And this is where the real magic of our professional organizing team comes in because we now get to start containerizing many of these items.
But let’s not jump the gun too quickly without addressing the elephant in the room. Because one of the biggest misconceptions about organizing is that it's all about how it looks.
As an interior designer, you best believe we want a drop-dead gorgeous pantry that feels like the ultimate guilty pleasure. But for Elegant Simplicity® — function always precedes aesthetic + so we want an easy to use kitchen pantry.
“And visibility is key to function!”
For most pantry items, we generally recommend clear jars, bins, trays, canisters or containers because not only can you see what’s inside but you can easily tell when you’re getting low or when things need to be replenished. Long term, this is saving you time because it makes creating your grocery shopping list a whole lot more efficient.
Another upside to using clear jars, canisters + airtight containers is that they keep food fresh longer. While certain items (like chips, crackers, etc) can be containerized in airtight canister, they are typically best suited for baskets or bins + the same goes for anything that’s an odd or irregular shape. To keep it from flopping over + causing you headache storing it in a container maintains an easy to use pantry.
The trick to creating a highly functional pantry that looks great + works well starts with accurate measurements. Our professional organizers measure the depth (front to back of each shelf) as well as the height in between shelves before we ever begin curation of containers.
Psst. In need of a helpful resource for containerizing? We got you, friend.
Label Your Pantry
As pretty as they are...creating labels isn’t just about making your pantry l-o-o-k pretty.
In fact, when it comes to getting organized we consider the process of labeling things to be one of the most integral part of maintaining functionality + order long term.
Why you ask?
Well, with so much activity happening in this corner of your house, even if you could remember what’s inside all these clear jars, containers, bins + baskets most likely your husband, your personal chef or house manager who does all of your grocery shopping + comes once a week to help prep meals, or the those little tykes you have running around won’t.
Not to mention, labeling makes it incredibly efficient in putting away groceries.
Long story short, you can use a label maker, purchase decorative labels or use a chalkboard pen to create labels for your pantry items.
No matter what labels in your pantry are a MUST *wink*!!!
Extra Tips For Mastering How To Organize A Pantry
Utilize The Pantry Door
When it comes to a kitchen pantry where we might find ourselves short on pantry storage, our organizing team reverts to utilizing the vertical door space.
We use this area for storing things like: canned goods, spices, kids snacks or even a place for baggies.
Create A Kid Zone
Speaking of kids, to empower + help your little humans make good decisions + develop healthy eating habits our organizing team creates a place designated for kid’s snacks, bowls, cups, silverware etc.
This way, when our hungry independent children want a snack, they’re able to access things on their own. This also holds true for them helping set the table or assisting in unloading the dishwasher + put groceries away.
Kid you NOT, according to top psychologists, children need both affection + structure in order to develop into secure, happy adults. Not to mention, the added help around the house doesn’t hurt for the parents *wink*!
Class It Up
If you really want a drop-dead gorgeous pantry we recommend emptying everything out of your kitchen pantry + having a painter give the walls + shelves a fresh coat of paint.
We’re also no strangers to adding a wall covering to the back wall of our clients pantry’s, drawers liners to their shelves or removable decals to help further organize the kitchen pantry into clearly visible + defined sections.
Shelf Liners
Speaking of shelf liners, if you have wire shelves + you either don’t want to or can’t replace them, we strongly recommend plastic shelf liners. These keep things from falling through the holes between the wires + they make stacking a heck of a lot easier.
But, if you’ve got wood shelves… one way to really add a subtle pop of personality + a bit of elegance to an otherwise utilitarian space is to add removable shelf liners.
Stack Front-to-Back
Consider how you’ll manage new items as you bring into your pantry so you can use up all of the older items first.
Perhaps, you’ll accomplish this by creating tiered storage during your containerizing or stacking items front to back on shelves. Moving older items towards the front of your pantry + stacking back up of the same items directly behind them.
Maintain An Organized Kitchen Pantry
Once everything is organized, the simplest way to maintain an organized kitchen pantry is to do the work.
Evaluate Why
If you notice something isn’t getting put back where it’s supposed to evaluate why.
Is it simply not getting put back but should have? Then put it where it belongs
Maybe, it’s an item you use every day but is cumbersome + hard to reach. Can it be swapped out with something you use less frequently?
Maintaining an organized pantry (+ kitchen) is all about your habits + your routines.
Don’t be afraid to adjust — the best organizing systems are built around how you use your home.
Create An Ongoing Shopping List
One thing that we typically tell our clients to do after they’ve organized their pantry is to create + keep an ongoing shopping list of items that need to be replaced (typically these are things they used the last of or are getting low on)
This way, the next time you’re prepping someone for a grocery run — you’re one step ahead of the game + everything they need is ready to go.
ORGANIZING TIP: John + I actually have a recurring event on our personal calendars that we update every couple days with anything we need from the store (including what goes in our pantry). Because it’s accessible on our phones, our shopping list is always available + we’re never buying extras.
P.S. If you’re like OMG — I cannot do this alone… there’s absolutely no reason to be ashamed, feel judged or deprioritize your needs (or those of your family) any longer. Perhaps consider hiring a professional organizer… we just so happen to know one *wink*
You can read more about our organizing membership + request a FREE 30-minute Clarity Call.
Psst… Check out our FREE Video Course: 4 Days To A More Beautiful + Functional Home