The most important aspect of a perfect pantry is that it is organized. If your pantry is a mess, you will not be able to find anything, and it will add stress to your life. You need to have an organized pantry not only so that you can find ingredients and food items when you need them but so that you will know what you need to add to your grocery list when it’s time to go shopping.
You also want to be able to get to your pantry easily. In other words, it needs to be handy because you will need to get items out of it frequently when you are baking and cooking. An ideal pantry set up will allow you to see everything in it at a glance. A pantry is typically located right next to or even in your kitchen and can be a walk-in type or a closet. You may just have cupboards as well. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s organized and easy to access.
If you have limited space or cupboards, there are many gadgets on the market that you can add to make everything more convenient and easier to stay organized such as slide out drawers and cupboards. You can also add small shelves to bigger cupboards to help you make the most of your space and to keep similar items grouped together. There are also many containers and bins that you can use to store ingredients. Go for clear canisters and packaging whenever possible to help you see what you have with a glance. Or, you could also use labels to label everything.
If you are not very tall, you should keep a step stool handy so you can utilize your tall cupboards and so you can reach items without much effort at all.
Group items together so that they are easy to find. Keep your spices and cans of soup together. You can even designate certain cupboards for certain things. For example, you may want to have a “baking” cupboard where you keep all of your cake mixes and pie fillings.
You can even have a running shopping list inside one of your cupboards where you can add items that are getting low. When it is time to head to the store, you won’t have to go through everything to see what you are running low on. This will save you time and your sanity.
You always want to keep things that you often use within reach and at eye level. Keep the bulk items and seasonal items on the lower or top shelves. You can also store rarely used appliances there as well.
If you are very organized and want to show off your pantry you can add a fun backsplash to your shelves. There are plenty of pretty wallpapers or sticky papers that you can use to express your fun personality and to compliments the colors of your kitchen.
If you have a pantry with a door, you can always use that as extra space to get organized as well. Hang up a clear over-the-door organizer to store items such as snacks, plastic cutlery, or other items. You can use hooks to hang up aprons, pits, and pans.
If you have the room, you can even add an island on wheels that you can use to store additional pantry items. If oyu have far too many spices and not enough room to store them all you can always think outside the box and store them in a vertical organizer using a curtain rod and some clips. Simply store your spices in clear bags an clip onto your spice rack organizer system and voila! There are seemingly limitless ways to get organized, and you can utilize a few or many to make your life stress-free and pretty. Try out some new ideas to see what works for you.