A cluttered pantry is every homeowner’s worst nightmare. Organizing the pantry can take up an entire day or two, be it a small cabinet, a whole cupboard, or a deep walk-in pantry. So what are the best solutions to dealing with a messy deep pantry situation without wasting too much time?
Here are 10 best solutions to deal with a deep pantry:
- Start with decluttering a stocked pantry.
- Measure out all the available space.
- Plan out what goes where.
- Make frequently-used items more accessible.
- Allocate specialized zones in your pantry.
- Opt for pull-out storage.
- Add new purchases to the back.
- Use an upper shelf for lighter items.
- Add clear and labeled containers for baking ingredients.
- Keep Notes.
So are you ready to do over your deep pantry and organize it for better usage? In today’s blog post, I will explain the above pointers a little further to help you leverage your storage units for maximum utility. Let us begin!
10 Solutions to Organizing Your Deep Pantry
Deep pantry organizing with minimal effort is a dream come true if you are cut for time. You can redecorate it, re-stock, and re-organize it to suit your needs. So whether it is re-stocking your pantry or keeping the snacks away from little prying hands, here are 10 solutions to renovating your deep pantry.
1. Start With Decluttering a Stocked Pantry
While you might find it easy to clean a near-empty pantry, it is best to start with a well-stocked pantry. Doing so can help you account for what you generally store and allow you to designate its storage space. Furthermore, knowing what constitutes your pantry’s clutter makes it easier to detect errors in your organizing habits.
Start by checking all food items’ labels to locate the ones past their expiry date. Pantries are the number one place where you can easily shelf a food item for years, forgetting to use it before the expiry date.
Granted, it can be hard to stay updated on every item’s expiry date, especially if you are a busy bee. However, doing so now can help you understand how much food and money get wasted through cluttering and how to manage it efficiently.
Moreover, it is a great way to take note of what you purchase for your pantry every month. This helps with the following:
- Striking out unnecessary purchases off your grocery lists.
- Making a note of family favorites and the foods everyone ignores.
- Figuring out how much space the items take up.
2. Measure Out All the Available Space
Now that you have decluttered your shelves, cupboards, and drawers, the empty spaces can help you measure how much area is available for your new deep pantry plan. You can also draw out the pantry’s spaces and figure out how to restock your groceries, cutlery, and cooking utensils so that everything is neat and easily accessible.
Measuring out an empty, decluttered pantry comes with benefits and is also a great way to check if you wish to:
- Renovate the area
- Add a few more storage spaces
- Repair chipped or broken bits– often, heavy appliances can deteriorate storage units.
An empty deep pantry unit will also offer you the chance to brainstorm whether you need to add bins, smaller containers, and other storage units to maximize utility.
Not to forget, while measuring, you can also peek into nooks and crannies to find spots to fix, recolor, or even repair.
All in all, measuring the empty pantry is a great way to plan ways to make the space more versatile for you and your family, roommate, or partner.
3. Plan Out What Goes Where
Organizing a kitchen’s deep pantry is no easy task. However, once the clutter is cleared and you have looked at the spaces well, you can now plan what goes where. Moreover, taking every item out and noting necessities and the useless ones helps out with the organization.
Let us start with what you want to keep in the deep pantry.
These pantries have a lot of space, cupboards, drawers, and cabinets. You might also find locked areas and the classic double cabinets more purposeful in maintaining safe and long-lasting storage.
Each of these spaces can store various items, such as:
- Snacks
- Canned juices
- Plastic containers
- Sauces
- Seasonings
- Food packets
- Grocery bags
- Kitchen equipment
- Utensils
- Cooking appliances, etc.
An empty deep pantry can help you figure out how to reallocate these resources inside the different areas so everything stays fresh, is of use, and serves its purpose all year long. For convenience, you can also repurpose various portions and add crates, pegs, and drawer separators.
4. Make Frequently-Used Items More Accessible
Which items in the pantry do you use the most and more frequently? Ensure they stay in the most accessible parts of your deep pantry.
To do this, you can put the frequently-used items inside the pull-out drawers. These portions are available to stock in, making it easy for you to walk in, reach, and grab the necessary items.
If you have more frequently-used items than everyday products, one way to include more space is through straw bins. Straw bins such as the LFN Woven Straw Storage Bins (link to Amazon) provide ample space for:
- Snacks
- Sauce cans
- Condiments
- Jars
- Food packets, etc.
You can also go for non-lid ones, making its content more accessible and easy to spot for kids and adults in a hurry.
Another way of ensuring you utilize the most easily-accessible deep pantry portion is to choose spots you can reach easily. You can also make items in the deep pantry more accessible by hanging a pegboard.
Pegboards are great for hanging commonly-used cooking utensils like skillets and pans over a free wall. And after cleaning them, these utensils dry the fastest when hanging down, saving you cooking and cleaning time.
5. Allocate Specialized Zones in Your Pantry
Designate a particular spot for a certain type of item in the deep pantry. For example, storing bread, pasta, and brownies in one place and cramming up another shelf with cereals can make the deep pantry look messy. Bread has a lower shelf life than pasta, and brownies can last longer. Similarly, cereals are an everyday-consumed item, similar to bread (due to their quick expiry dates).
Hence, allocating the bread, cereals, and other quickly-perishable items to a similar spot can ease your chores. You can also plan out a larger storage space for easily-perishable items in more open areas or use lid-less crates. This way, you can account for things you need to consume quicker than the others.
Another fun way of designating spots is through meal preps. If you cook something regularly, such as broccoli soup for dinner, you can keep all its ingredients in one specialized drawer to make it easier to find them quickly.
This saves cooking time and keeps you updated on when one component is out of stock. This way, you always know precisely where things are when prepping something.
6. Opt for Pull-Out Storage
If you are brainstorming ideas for deep pantry renovation, I suggest adding pull-out storage drawers. This storage option is always out of sight but readily available.
There are many benefits to installing pull-out pantry shelves in the kitchen:
- Make deep pantries extra spacious, allowing you to store your extra purchases for special lunches or family occasions.
- Make items more accessible and easy to find.
- Enable you to put many things on one shelf and keep the kitchen countertop cleaner.
These sliding shelves also make it easy to organize pots, pans, and containers in one spot without stacking them in a hurry. Some of these drawers have enough space to temporarily store baskets and containers to keep them from heat and add more space to your countertop while cooking.
You can also use them to reduce kitchen clutter after a long day of work and make your cooking area look cleaner, open, and more spacious. Moreover, you can have multi-stories drawers, allowing you to put non-frequent utensils and cutleries higher up and not take up the food storage spaces.
7. Add New Purchases to the Back
When adding food items to the storage shelves, try to put new things in the back of the drawer. That way, you can consume the previously-bought foods and ingredients before their expiry dates.
Once you store food items in the deep pantry, it is easy to forget about a product or a certain item. While decluttering, you might have found tonnes of expired chips, crackers, gummies, spices, and syrups.
One way to prevent this is to re-do your pantry monthly and check labels for expiry dates. This way, you can put the soon-to-expire food items at the front of the pull-out cabinets. If you find items whose expiry dates are a year later or more (new purchases), store them at the back.
This way, after the front batches are used-up, you can pull the backbenchers to the front and add new purchases behind them.
Adding newer purchases to the back of your deep pantry is a great way to organize your pantry and utilize its spacious storage to keep a tab on expiry dates.
You will always be pulling the soon-to-perish items forward and utilizing them. Moreover, you will have less wastage per month by not throwing out unused, expired food items.
8. Use Upper Shelf for Lighter Items
If you have wall shelves or pull-out drawers, designate the upper shelves for lighter items and the lowers for heavier units. For example, if you have sizeable cookware, such as
- Ceramic cooking pots
- Dumpling steamers
- Boiling pots
- Air fryers
- Induction cookers
Allocate their storage space in the lower cabinets to reduce the risks of these cookwares falling over someone.
It is always best to store heavy items on the lower shelves inside a deep pantry to avoid accidents. Moreover, heavier items tend to dent hanging shelves causing tiny cracks. Keeping them on lower shelves makes them easy to grab when cooking up a storm.
These heavier items include:
- A large bag of flour
- Sugar
- Potatoes
- Family-sized cereal boxes
Since pull-out shelves contain ample space, you can use the top cabinets to store regular cereal and dry food containers, cans, sauces, pasta packets, small dishes, cups, etc. These have a lower chance of falling over and do not break easily, making them risk-free top-shelf candidates in the deep pantry.
9. Use Clear, Well-Labeled Containers for Baking Ingredients
Most baking ingredients come in powdered form, such as:
- Regular and gluten-free flour
- Yeast
- Salt
- Baking powder
- Baking soda
- Cocoa powder
- Cinnamon, etc.
While most of these come in packets or small containers, they are easy to misplace, given their different container sizes. Moreover, most of these baking ingredients look identical, and you might confuse one thing with another and make your baked goods taste weird.
One way to avoid such confusion is to place them in clear containers and label them individually.
Using clear containers provides a great way to organize your food ingredients, dry foods, cereals, etc. Not to forget, if you have someone with gluten, dairy, or any food-related allergies, their visit to the deep pantry will be safe and uneventful if you use clear, labeled containers.
All in all, you can keep your kitchen clean and safe by utilizing your deep pantry for all storage purposes.
10. Make Your Deep Pantries Look Aesthetic
While the deep pantry is solely for storage, you can always make it look fancy and pleasing. There are several ways of doing this. For example, you can go for some stylish display ideas like:
- Adding colorful transparent containers that suit your kitchen decor.
- Using glass mason jars for storage purposes.
- Painting or buying painted shelves and cupboards to accentuate the kitchen’s interior decor.
You can also organize the foods based on their colors, shapes, sizes, and purpose, adding a culinary aesthetic to the pantry. While doing so does not add any benefits per se, the styles are quite pleasing to the eye.
Recommended Reading:
- Wire vs. Wood Shelves: Which Is Better for a Pantry?
- Do You Need a Pantry in Your Kitchen? How To Decide
Declutter your home once and for all (Even if you have no time and don't know where to begin)! Learn More.
