This past week a mom on a local mom's Facebook group asked for tips to organize her pantry. With the new year, I also am organizing my pantry and other areas of my home. I found these tips so helpful and figured that with the new year many of the MacKid readers may also be trying to get organized, that I decided to share a summary of them with you. Thanks to all the organized moms who helped make this article possible with their helpful tips!
- Group things together
- Put all of your breakfast stuff on one shelf. Flour, sugar, and things for baking on another shelf. Snacks and easy to grab and go food on another shelf. Pasta, cans, and rice grouped together. Buy baskets to help keep the smaller things organized.
- Keep things that go together in the same area. All boxes together and grouped by similarity for easy picking.... all condiments together... all cans... the bottom shelf is all kid snacks/packed lunch things
- Containers
- One mom wrote, "Dollar tree has perfect containers and I hot-glue chalk board pieces to them"
- The clear air tight containers for anything in a bag helps keep bugs away.
- One mom shared, "I use open plastic bins for different loose products. One for chips, one for candy/treats, one for breads and crackers, one for rice and beans, one for nuts, seeds & dried fruit, one for seasonings/meal helper packets and so forth. When I need to find something, I can pull out one bin like a drawer to examine the choices."
- You can get nice baskets and containers at Big Lots, TJ Maxx, Walmart, and Target. Tags can be found at Dollar Tree, Hobby Lobby and Michael’s. Besides hot glue you can use twine to tie the tags on.
- Other Ideas
- Put a shower bar up and use hangers with clips to store all the bagged items.
- On the back of the door, use a shoe storage hanger to keep all the little items season packets etc. (Editor's note: shoe storage hangers work great for craft supplies too!)
- One mom's plan: Take everything out of the pantry. Then decide where you want the categories to go. Get clear totes to organize. Take everything out of the cardboard and packaging and put it in the clear totes. That is how you get an impeccable pantry for $5 from the dollar store.
