Easy Tips For Pantry Organization

Last updated on March 6th, 2024

Inside: Kitchen pantry organization is a must in every household. It’s a space that gets utilized every single day, so keeping it clutter-free is important. This post explains exactly how to organize your kitchen pantry to achieve that Pinterest-worthy pantry you’ve always dreamed of.

There’s just something about a newly organized space that brings me so much joy. I love decluttering a once-chaotic area in my home and breathing new life into it. It’s such a satisfying feeling.

Organizing my kitchen pantry has been high on my to do list for awhile now. My kitchen pantry desperately needed some organizational TLC. We’ve got a somewhat smaller pantry, so it’s been easy to let things get a little messy in there.

Why You Should Organize Your Kitchen Pantry

When you’ve got a disorganized pantry, you waste more money on food. A cluttered pantry makes it hard to find things, so you end up throwing away half-eaten boxes of now-stale snacks or buying duplicates of items you didn’t even need. Wasting money like that doesn’t feel good – you’re literally throwing your money in the garbage simply because your space isn’t organized.

Transforming your kitchen pantry with these simple organizational tips will help cut back on food waste, duplicate spending, and an overall feeling of clutter when you look at your pantry everyday. With these tips you’ll no longer be cringing when you open your kitchen pantry doors.

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How To Organize Your Kitchen Pantry: A 5 Step Process

1. Take everything out of the space you’re working on

The first step in organizing your kitchen pantry is to remove every single item from your kitchen pantry. This helps you start over and visualize what you want to achieve. It’s hard to envision the change you want to achieve when it still looks the same.

So get everything out of the way and clean any shelves or flooring as needed. You’ll be surprised at how much dust and debris gets trapped inside your pantry. Give it a good scrub down so you can start fresh.

I removed every single item from my kitchen pantry and laid everything out on my kitchen countertop. Once the pantry was completely emptied, I cleaned the floor of the pantry. I have to admit that I was grossed out by how badly my floor needed cleaned. It was always so buried in junk, I had no clue how bad it was. 

2. Go through each item and throw out, donate, or keep

The second step is to sort through all of your food. Be ruthless with this one, otherwise, you’ll just end up with clutter all over again. Throw out anything expired and donate anything you won’t eat to your local foodbank. Keep only items that your family will actually eat.

For this step, I got rid of some half eaten stale crackers or foods that I bought and didn’t really end up liking. I don’t know why I sometimes hang on to foods like this. I know that if it isn’t good, it’ll just sit there until it expires. Don’t let it take up space in your pantry.

3. Sort and group similar pantry items together

The third step in organizing your kitchen pantry is to group similar foods together. This step is important because it will help guide you towards what sorts of storage bins or baskets you’ll need to purchase and how many you’ll need.

With my pantry, I grouped foods like this:

• pastas
• canned goods
• cereal boxes
• crackers
• pre-packed snacks
• cereal bars & protein bars
• nuts and granolas
• PB or other nut butters
• chips

Once I was able to organize items into similar groups, I could begin determining what size bins I needed and how many of them were necessary.

4. Utilize bins, totes, or bags to keep your pantry organized

Once you have organized your foods into groups and determined how many storage bins you’ll need, go ahead and start buying what works for your kitchen pantry. This might take a little bit of trial and error in getting the right sizes and quantities.

This is what I used to organize my kitchen pantry:

I’ve listed below the products (links included!) that I used for organizing my kitchen pantry. Below, I explain specifically which foods I stored in each bin.

• about a dozen of these clear storage pull out bins
• about 6 of these airtight cereal containers
• a variety pack or two of these airtight lock and lock containers
• these plastic totes for the personal items stored on the pantry floor

How I utilized kitchen pantry storage bins:

These clear storage pull out bins are what I used for the cereal bars, granola bars, pre-packaged individual snacks, small baggies of chips, fruit snacks, etc. I love the tidy neat rows these created for my snacks. Storing snacks in this way can be helpful for children to easily find the snacks they are looking for.

These airtight cereal containers fit most large cereal boxes and they seal great – they don’t allow cereal to get stale. Using these clear cereal storage containers is helpful because you’ll be able to tell exactly how much cereal is left when creating your weekly grocery list.

These airtight lock and lock containers hold all of my bulky boxes of crackers or snacks and some of my taller spaghettis. I love that the pack I bought came in a variety of sizes. Again, these clear containers are super helpful in purchasing groceries because you’ll never have to check inside boxes to see how many snacks are left.

I utilized these plastic totes for my personal items that I store in the bottom of our pantry. We haven’t built a mudroom bench yet, so I store my purse, diaper bag, and lunch box in our pantry. Now everything on the pantry floor has a contained home and it looks less cluttered. These bins can easily be pulled out to vacuum and mop my pantry floor now so that things don’t get so gross again.

As you can see, I left the bigger chip bags as is on the very top shelf. We switch chip varieties constantly, so I didn’t want to keep having to wash out airtight containers each week. This works great for us. Really try to think of ways to add functionality to your space unique to your own family’s needs.

5. Label bins to keep things organized and tidy

Labeling bins will help keep your kitchen pantry organized going forward because nobody will have to guess where things go. Plus, doesn’t everyone love pretty labels?! The containers that I bought came with labels and a marker which I thought was a nice bonus. But this leads me to my bonus tip…

*Bonus Tip: live with your new organized pantry for awhile

Live with your new space for awhile and don’t be afraid to make adjustments as needed. Just because you spent an hour or two organizing a new space, doesn’t mean you have to keep it that way forever. You can live with your changes and adjust things to fit your household’s needs.

I haven’t labeled any of my bins yet, because I want to live with my space to make absolutely sure it’s going to function properly for my family. I’m sure I’ll make some adjustments here and there – this is totally normal when starting over with a new organized space.

Let me know what changes you’ve made to your kitchen pantry by leaving a comment below! Be sure to check out my Toy Room Rotation Post for more home organization tips.