The Best Items and Strategies for a More Organized Pantry

If there's one area of your home that's tough to declutter, it's your kitchen. You don't make all your recipes all the time, but you need all those ingredients and food items for when you do, so they have to stay in the pantry. But just because there's a high volume of items in there doesn't mean it has to be disorganized. Like your spice cabinet, the pantry can be reorganized to be more efficient so when you do need something, you know right where it is.

Get better containers for your pantry

Pantry staples come in their own containers, which is convenient, sure—but the lack of uniformity between baking soda, Hamburger Helper, cereal, flour, and whatever else is no good for organization. Mismatched boxes and vessels are hard to stack and can lead to some items getting hidden or even damaged. Instead of relying on the cardboard boxes or bags your food items come in, you should pick up reusable containers.

In addition to making the space more uniform and the items easier to access, airtight containers keep food fresher. You don't have to worry about moisture, bugs, mice, your pets, or your kids making a mess of your goods, at least not as much as you might if you were relying on the original packaging. In general, I'm a big fan of decanting everything you buy at the store, from skincare to to food, for these same reasons. It's an organizational win.

Depending on the volume of different ingredients and foods you have, your size needs may vary, but in general, look for a set like this:

What I really like about the set above is that not only are all of the containers stackable regardless of size, but it comes with a set of labels and a marker. Making everything fit together is important, but so is identifying what it all is. When you're preparing a meal or planning out what you need to get at the store, there isn't a lot of room for surprises, so being able to see, right away, what is in every container is crucial and will keep you more organized, too.

Adopt an organizational method for the pantry

Once again, I'm going to advocate for the rules of the Organizational Triangle here: You should store all similar items together and everything you own should have a designated place. It doesn't matter if your pantry is a whole room to the side of the kitchen or just the word you use to describe your big cabinet full of dry goods; whatever you're using to store those items needs to follow these rules.

Here, you have some wiggle room. You could store items in groups based on what they're used for, for one. Maybe you have a baking section and a cooking section, a barbecue section and an "easy meals" section, etc. Then again, there would be some overlap there. Would a pre-made pasta salad kit go in the barbecue area or the easy meals area? Would salt go in cooking or baking? Your goal in creating these sections is to always be able to know where the thing you need is when you need it, so the sections should make sense for your particular needs. You can organize by meal type or time of day, with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack sections separated out, by the food preferences of individual family members, or a week in advance, creating sections based on the recipes you're planning for the next seven dinners.

Again, there will be some overlap no matter what you do, so the best categorization method is one that makes sense to you, that you'll remember, and that you'll stick to.

Other pantry organizing goodies

There are a few other tools on the market that, while not totally necessary, can make pantry organization easier. Depending on how big of a space you're working with, you might want to grab some free-standing pull-out shelves ($26.99). With these, you can stack lesser used items in the back, keep what you reach for most often near the front, but still access those back items easily when it's time to use them.

If space is tight, try an over-the-door organizer ($27.99), which has room for canned goods, chips, and larger items, plus makes use of the otherwise-wasted space between your shelves and the door when it's closed.

Finally, pick up a few basic storage containers. Not everything needs a lid, especially snacks that are individually packaged, like granola bars. Having faster access to the grab-and-go items will reduce the mess made by digging through larger or more inaccessible bins in a hurry. A two-pack of plastic bins with dividers is $19.99.