How do I layout my pantry?

Divide your pantry into zones to keep your food organized and reduce meal preparation time . First, identify food and cooking categories that suit your lifestyle (such as weeknight dinners, portable lunches, and baking). Next, designate an area for each, with the most often-used zones easiest to get to.

How do you group items in your pantry?

Designate areas for different types of food such as baked goods; breakfast items like cereal, oatmeal, jams, spreads and syrups; grains; bottled, canned and boxed beverages; tea and coffee; snacks; boxed or canned stocks; condiments; and oil and vinegar.

How do you stage a kitchen pantry?

Organize the Pantry Remove nonessential items, like packaged cookies, crackers, snacks, and extra “bulk” meals, and keep pantry staples, like flour, spices, rice, and pasta, in matching food storage containers or open baskets.

What is a walk-in pantry?

A butler's pantry typically includes a sink, counter space, and sometimes a refrigerator or wine cooler, while a walk-in pantry typically has shelves, cabinets, and drawers for storage, as well as space for larger items like appliances and bulk food storage .

How to style a walk-in pantry?

If your pantry space is large enough to walk in and have three walls of shelving, think about using deeper shelves on one side for small appliances, serving dishes, baking dishes and such. Then shelves on the other side not so deep to store food, like canned goods, cereal boxes, dry foods and such.

What is the best shelf layout for a pantry?

Start with bottom shelves 16 to 18 inches deep and spaced about 18 to 24 inches apart for bulky items; make shelves at eye level 12 to 14 inches deep and spaced 14 to 16 inches apart to fit cereal boxes and canisters. Shelves for spices and cans may need no more than 6 inches front to back.

Where do you put things in kitchen cupboards?

You'll want all of your kitchen items as close as possible to where you most often use them . Don't hesitate to change the location of where you previously stored items. For instance, you don't have to keep your cooking spices in the pantry if they would be more convenient for you in a cabinet next to the stove.

Organize Your Kitchen Pantry In 6 Simple Steps (2024)

Transform your messy pantry into one of the most useful and organized spaces in your home. With these 6 easy steps to organize your kitchen pantry, we’ll help you put everything in order and keep it that way.

How do you organize your kitchen pantry? The kitchen pantry is the perfect place to keep spices, snacks, and miscellaneous stuff out of the way. Because of this, the contents of your pantry are inherently out of sight – and, because of this, often entirely out of mind. This makes the pantry one of the easiest places in your home for clutter to accumulate.

Fortunately, with a little effort, it isn’t hard to transform your pantry into one of the most useful and organized spaces in your home.

Organize Your Kitchen Pantry In 6 Simple Steps (1)

Wondering where to begin? Get our FREE guide, The 30-Minute Organizing Secret, and discover easy ways to overcome the chaos of clutter – even with kids at home!

How to Organize Your Kitchen Pantry in 6 Easy Steps

Want to organize your kitchen pantry once and for all? Follow these steps!

As you keep organizing your kitchen, our Take Back Control eBook is right there with you, listing out each step. Download it and whip your kitchen into an efficient room in no time at all.

Step 1 – Clear it out.

Don’t make the mistake of trying to organize your kitchen pantry by shuffling around the things inside. Instead, you’ll want to start with a clean slate.

Clear your counters or a nearby table and spread out the contents of your pantry. Being able to view everything you need to store at once will allow you to truly assess what you’re trying to store and will enable you to approach your pantry organization project in a more methodical way.

Step 2 – Clean it up.

Don’t shove your stuff back into a dusty, dirty pantry. Instead, take the opportunity to deep-clean the space once everything has been removed.

Wipe down your shelves and cut liners to fit to prevent future messes. Shake the crumbs out of any storage containers you already have, and sweep up any crumbs that have taken hold in the corners of the floor.

This part doesn’t have to take very long. In fact, Real Simple has a checklist that shows how you can have a sparkling clean pantry in only 15 minutes.

Step 3 – Consider storage solutions.

Once you’ve cleaned out space and know what you’re working with, see if you need to invest in any storage solutions to help organize your kitchen pantry.

If your pantry could benefit from a few bins or containers to keep things organized, don’t be afraid to invest in some items to keep you tidy.

Baskets and bins can be used to store snacks, keep spices in order, and group similar ingredients.

Pro-tip: Measure your shelves before you buy so you know what size containers will fit your space! This will save you so much time from going to the store and trying to guess. Then getting home and realizing it didn’t work. For more pro-tips, learn how to Organize Your Pantry Like a Professional in this article.

Organize Your Kitchen Pantry In 6 Simple Steps (3)

Step 4 – Group like items together.

To make it easier to find what you’re looking for, store items that belong together in the same area. This is where your bins can come in handy!

Keep baking items like flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda next to each other, and store the chips with the other snacks – not with the canned goods.

This tip is especially helpful if you have a home without much storage and have to keep non-food things in your pantry.

Organize Your Kitchen Pantry In 6 Simple Steps (4)

Step 5 – Label everything.

Once you’ve sorted your items and put them into their respective storage containers and corners of the pantry, it’s time to make some labels!

Don’t give family members the excuse of not knowing where things belong. Print off some fun labels at home to make it easy for everyone to know what goes in which bin, or use a label maker to indicate where items should go on each shelf.

Labeling bins can be a lot of fun. There are lots of small shops on Etsy that sell gorgeous labels that are one-of-a-kind.

Or, you can find some chalkboard labels and handwrite them.

No matter how you do it, labeling things is a very important step to organizing your pantry. It gives it the finishing touch and helps everyone know where things belong when they are putting away the groceries.

Then, set yourself up for success next time by keeping an inventory of your pantry. It’s easy to do with the Clutter Keeper Meal Planner. This printable bundle includes a sheet where you can write down what’s in your fridge, freezer, and pantry, along with when it expires!

Step 6 – Don’t get messy!

Once you’ve put time and effort into organizing your pantry, you shouldn’t let it get out of order again. Be diligent about putting things back where they belong and cleaning up messes as soon as they occur. Otherwise, you’ll soon find yourself right back where you started – staring at a cluttered pantry.

The best way to prevent your pantry from returning to the mess it was before is to set a regular cleaning schedule. Once a month go through and do a 15-minute clean up. Wipe everything down, make sure all the items are where they belong, and donate the food or other stuff your family doesn’t need.

What storage techniques helped you organize yourkitchen pantry? Are there any organizational rules you follow here? If so, leave a comment below to share!

We’ve got a great list of the most common pantry storage mistakes and solutions. Check to see if you are making any of these oversights and take your pantry to the next level!

Organize Your Kitchen Pantry In 6 Simple Steps (5)

Struggling to get motivated? Sign up to get our FREE guide, The 30-Minute Organizing Secret, and discover easy ways to overcome the chaos of clutter – even with kids at home!

More Organizing Tips

Now that you have a sparkling pantry, step back and enjoy it! Need some more organizing inspiration? There are a lot of amazing resources here on the Clutter Keeper® blog.

Here are a few more to help you create – and keep – the home of your dreams.

How to Keep Your Kids Organized – If you struggle with kids that leave a trail of chaos wherever you go, you are not alone. And these tips will help you instill an organized lifestyle in your kids.
– Just like having an organized pantry is simple, creating an organized laundry room can be a breeze!
13 Family Command Center Ideas – Keeping track of everyone’s schedules and important papers is so much easier with these ideas.
How to Create a Year-Round De-Cluttering Routine – Maintaining an organized lifestyle is an ongoing process that never ends. This routine makes it so much more manageable.