8 Ideas for Organizing a Small Kitchen Pantry
Your small kitchen pantry can easily become a black hole of stale chips, cookies, crackers, and old boxes of cereal. The best way to know what you have is to get it organized as much as possible and maximize space.
Before you start your organizing project, be sure to throw out any expired or old food, especially food that has been open for a while that you don’t remember buying.
Once you’ve done that, evaluate your small pantry and employ the eight ideas mentioned below.
Clean and Sanitize Your Small Pantry
After you've thrown out expired and unwanted food items, clean and sanitize your empty pantry. The Happy Housie recommends that you wipe everything down with a wet paper towel and a squirt of dish soap. A cleaning wipe works as well. Make sure you dry your pantry before putting everything back in. You don’t want to have food that smells like cleaning supplies.
Remove Appliances and Other Non-Food Items
If you have a small pantry in your kitchen, it’s a good idea to remove appliances and other non-food items. Try to find other places to store these items so they're not taking up vital space.
Does your pantry house a crockpot, air fryer, mixer, blender, or toaster oven when not in use? Why? Stop taking up valuable space! Appliances that aren't used regularly can be stored in your buffet or hard-to-reach cabinets (think above the microwave or fridge).
Sort Items Into Categories
Once your pantry has been cleaned and unwanted/expired items have been thrown out, it’s time to sort the items you’ve kept into categories. Some of the categories you can use when sorting essentials include the following:
- Pasta
- Snacks
- Baking items
- Chips
- Canned food
- Breakfast food
- Fruits/nuts
- Grains
As you separate your pantry items into different categories, try to picture where you will place them once it's time to put everything away. A shelf that sits at eye level for children is the best spot for cereal, snacks, and other items that they need quick access to throughout the day. Organizing your pantry in this way will make your life easier. You won't have to drop what you're doing every five minutes to grab your child a snack.
Measure The Space in Your Pantry
Before putting items back into your pantry, it’s best to measure the available space by height and width. This will make it easier to know what items can be placed where based on size, such as cereal boxes on the shelf with the most height available. Measuring ahead of time also takes the guesswork out of figuring out which storage containers, baskets, and bins will actually fit and which ones won't.
An Organized Pantry Has Storage Bins
The most organized pantry you can have in your kitchen will feature a couple of storage bins. You don’t need a bin or container for every category, but a rack for cans, airtight containers for cereal, and a basket for bagged snacks will help prevent it from becoming cluttered and wasting food.
Build Your Own Chip Rack
Depending on how your pantry is constructed, you can build your own chip rack. This is a great idea for families with young kids who take small bags of chips to school for snacks. Use a yardstick and curtain clips to build the rack.
Delish recommends that you paint the yardstick to match the color of the cabinets and then install it. Hang the bags using the curtain clips. Not only does this save space on the shelves, but it also allows you to get rid of the box the chips came in.
Clean-Up & Organize Your Spices
Every pantry carries an overabundance of spices. How long after purchasing a new bottle of Italian seasoning do you keep the old one just because there’s still a little bit left in the bottle? If you’ve got duplicate spices, clean up what you have by combining bottles or throwing old ones in the trash. Once you have dwindled down your collection, place the ones you're keeping on a spice rack.
Leave Room for New Items
There is such a thing as over-organizing your pantry. Doing so will make it difficult for family members to find what they're looking for. Organize your pantry to a point and then leave room for newly purchased items. You should also show everyone in the house where everything is located so they aren’t pulling one box out after another, looking for the right snack, cereal, or box of pasta.
Final Thoughts
Reorganizing your small kitchen pantry doesn’t have to be stressful. Once you remove all of the essentials and throw away expired or unwanted items, you will notice how easy it is to move forward with reorganizing. Consider buying bins, baskets, and organizer containers to make the job easier for everyone and to keep your small kitchen pantry easy to maintain.