How to Clean and Organize a Pantry

Look on the pantry shelves of anyone you know and you can find out a great deal about the woman of the house. Clean out and organize your pantry and you will have a neat and orderly pantry instead of a messy pantry. Which one do you have? Are you a neat and everything has a place and everything in its place' type of person, or do you just dump everything in and figure you will find it when you need it type of person.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. 
   Guess where everything is

   Remove everything from your pantry. Clean and organize a pantry shelf. Place everything on the kitchen table. Toss out anything outdated or bottles that have less than a teaspoon on the bottom.

2. 

   Organize whatever is left on the table. Put the baking items together. Spices and oils and utensils. These will go on a shelf next to each other. This will organize the pantry shelves and make it easier to locate whatever you are looking for.

3. Place canned soups together, placing the same ones next to or on top of each other. Place packaged soups nearby. On the same shelf place canned veggies, canned tuna, meats, peanut butter,jellies, and items used often and for meals or snacks. Place bags of chips, crackers, cereals on the same pantry shelve if there is room, or the shelf or shelves above or underneath but in the same area.

4. 
   easily locate anything

   Organize and clean a pantry by taking all your bottled items and placing them in one area. Where you put them depends on the size of your pantry. A large pantry would have them all on one shelf, a smaller one might have to place them in the same area but on a shelf below or above.It is easier to find what you want when you clean out and organize a pantry.

5. Gather all paper products, organize the napkins, paper towels and the likes, and place them on the highest shelve as they are not used as often as food products. Soda or beer cartons should be placed neatly on the floor as they are used and replaced more often.

Tips & Warnings

• An organized pantry will allow you to just reach in and find exactly what you need or want at any given time.
• Place goods that are seldom used on the top shelves, and those used very often at hands reach.
• Keep same type products together. All cereals hot and cold next to each other, packets of hot chocolate, near cookies and snack cakes, packaged soups, near canned soups, noodles,and pasta varieties also near each other.
• Make sure you keep checking dates, so that you can use the older dates before the latest ones.
• Throw out outdated and canned tops that pop when touched.

Resources

• Clean a Clothes Closet
• Pack to Move
• Wash Floors with a Foot
• Wash Laundry and Love it
• Stop Losing Socks in Washing Machine

[uniquechoices]

on 6/12/2009 Great article on how to clean out and organize a pantry.

[1GoGetter]

on 4/15/2009 What a timely article; I am currently building a pantry for my kitchen! Thanks for the organizing tips.

[barba0727]

on 4/9/2009 great article. I'm an organizer so I enjoyed it very much. 5*

[grimsleygl]

on 4/8/2009 Oh dear me...I'm the messing one! Hey, if you want a photo of a messy pantry to add to this great article, I'll send you one. However, I do love it when I take the time to organize my pantry and know exactly what I have and what needs to be thrown out. Problem is that I just don't keep it that way. I'm going to try to do better though. Thanks for the great article! 5*'s

[goldiec]

on 4/2/2009 Thanks for sharing this article. I started cleaning my pantry this morning. I took everything off one shelf and cleaned it and tomorrow I'll start on the next shelf. I needed these tips. 5*