5 Tips for Organizing a Pantry

There’s no better time than right after moving to organize your space just how you want it—and that includes your pantry. The pantry is one of those rooms that seems to go from managed to messy in the blink of an eye, and the more that you add to it, the more unruly it tends to get. If you put a priority on organizing a pantry right the first time though, you’ll have a much easier time keeping it functional. It may even turn into one of your favorite spaces in the house.

There are no hard and set rules when it comes to organizing a pantry, but there are some tricks of the trade that can help guide the process. Our biggest piece of advice: organize the space in a way that makes the most sense for your needs, picking and choosing what works best for you and your family from the guidelines below. When you’re done, you should end up with a pantry where you can actually find everything that you’re looking for. And for that, it’s worth putting in the work.

So how do you make your expertly-arranged pantry come to life? Here are five tips to help you out.

Empty It Out

Make a Plan of Attack

Bring in the Storage Help

To Label or Not to Label?

Take Advantage of Usually Wasted Space

Keeping Your Pantry Organized

Organizing a pantry is a project with big pay-off, but only if you can keep it in order. We recommend “spot-treating” your pantry as needed to clear up problem areas when and if they occur, which will prevent you from having to do a complete overhaul.

As you settle into your new home (or at least your newly organized pantry), keep an eye out for additional solutions you might have missed before or arrangements that you thought would make sense but that actually aren’t the best fit for you. Because you’ll have already laid down some solid groundwork, it shouldn’t be too difficult to make a few adjustments here and there as needed. And if you can’t keep your picture-perfect pantry how you want it, it might just mean that the original system you went with wasn’t the right way to go and you need to go back to the drawing board—an added bit of work after what you’ve already done, of course, but worth it if it means having a pantry that’s organized exactly how you want it.

In the mood to keep going? Check our five easy steps to organizing a closet and get even closer to the organized home of your dreams.