There’s nothing quite like the stress of hosting a party and spending half the time looking for your whisks and cake pans, or the horror of finding out your buttercream has gone past its expiration date while your daughter’s birthday cake is sitting cold on the counter.
We’ve recently shared tried and proven tips to declutter your kitchen.
Here we pay more attention to clearing the clutter behind cupboards and cabinets – the pantry.
Here are 5 strategies to declutter your pantry space:
1. Repurpose household items you already have as storage containers
It’s likely you have racks, and crates lying around gathering dust. Use them for extra pantry storage! Magazine racks and pencil holders make for nifty extra organizers too. Assign a home for every pantry item so you don’t have to spend 10 minutes looking for the bag of chips you bought last weekend.
2. Check your pantry weekly
Keeping your pantry clutter-free isn’t as time-consuming as you think. One way to do it is to make weekly inventories on your pantry items as part of your weekly meal-planning routine. Knowing exactly what’s in there is the best way to make sure you’re consuming what you already have, instead of buying duplicates of the same thing.
3. Use clear containers and labels
The easiest way to organize your pantry is to store items in clear, airtight containers. Stick on labels so it’s easier to tell flour from baking soda and salt from sugar.
4. Group items by sheet pans
They don’t exactly make for great aesthetics, but sheet pans make good shelf organizers. They help you make groupings easier and contain accidental leaks and spills.
5. Spend 10 minutes a day to clean your pantry
Take at least 10 minutes a day to give your pantry a quick wipe down, arranging packaged items so that labels face outward, tossing expired items, and returning them to their assigned “homes.”
This list has been adapted from this article by The Kitchn.
