The kitchen is often the most used room in the house, and the price of an unorganized kitchen can be high. Lots of wasted time looking for items and money wasted purchasing duplicates can add up to a lot of unwanted stress. But the payoff can be big and the best place to start your kitchen organizing project is the pantry.
Tip: Think of your pantry like the grocery store and section it into useful zones.
The grocery store arranges like items together in order to help you find things.
Another consideration is arranging items so that they are easy to see and access.
Some possible zones in your pantry include:
- Breakfast Zone: Hot and cold cereals, pancake mix and syrup, granola
bars or breakfast bars. Keep anything in this zone that you might possibly have for breakfast. - Baking Zone: Sugar, flour, spices, baking powder and soda, mixes (brownie, cake, muffin), oil, shortening, candy chips.
- Snack Zone: Chips, crackers, pretzels, cookies.
- Pasta and Grain Zone: Dried pasta, noodles, rice, bread crumbs, stuffing, potato mixes.
- Canned Fruits and Vegetables Zone: Fruits, vegetables, applesauce, tomatoes sauces.
- Condiments Zone: Mustard, ketchup, mayonnaise, salad dressings, barbeque sauce, peanut butter, jelly, salsa.
- Customized Zone: Keep ingredients together for recipes that you prepare often. If your family has pasta once a week, create a pasta zone with all the ingredients used.
Zoning your pantry will also provide you with a quick way to inventory what you have at a glance. It also makes putting away your groceries a lot easier on shopping day.
Tip: Arranging items so that they are easy to see and access is one of the key strategies to an organized pantry. Since many canned items are the same size and everything is stacked at the same eye level, it is easy to lose track of what you have.
Tip: Be sure that you are working within the space that you have. I know that it’s tempting to stock up on items because they may be on sale. But the truth of the matter is that if you don’t have the storage space, all you’re doing is creating clutter. Only buy items that you will use within a two-week period. This will help streamline your pantry and actually save you time and money down the road. And don’t worry —those items will be on sale again soon.
What do you do?
What do you do to manage your kitchen? Share your thoughts with the group!
