Tips for keeping your pantry organized
Keeping your pantry organized can be extremely hard and annoying. You use it everyday and everyone in your house gets into it, they look for things and mess it up. Here are some tips to keep it a little more organized and making organizing it a little easier for you.
If your pantry is really bad, then just take everything out. You probably will find cans that you haven't seen in months or years, bags, and empty containers of things that you used forever ago. Even if your pantry isn't that bad, take most of the stuff out. You want to get behind everything and clean it anyways. You can leave the big and heavy stuff in but take out anything that isn't in a specific place where it will stay after you have organized it.
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Check expiration dates on everything. If something is about to expire, just use it that night for dinner, or donate it to a local food bank. Don't throw it away just because, but donate it to somewhere that needs the extra food, especially if the food is still good.
Sort everything into categories. Put things together like all the pasta, all the cans, all the crackers. For the cans, sort them into smaller categories like soups, sauces, vegetables, fruits, and other. A really great tip; put all the cans together. There isn't any sense mixing them up when you know that when you want chicken noodle soup it will be in a can. It doesn't need to go next to the ramen just because it's chicken. It will make life so much easier.
When everything is in a pile of the same thing, then figure out where it's going to go, before you put it in the pantry. You don't want to move around 20 cans again because there wasn't enough space. Figure out the general area of where you want things and then start placing them back in the pantry. It may take a little extra time upfront but it will save you lots of time in the end.
When you are deciding where everything is going to go, remember that your kids will want to get some of their own food themselves. They need to have certain things like crackers on the lower shelves so that they can easily reach them. Also, when you are putting things away like cans, stack them and put the same of one thing behind the other same cans. You don't need to see 5 cans of tomato soup right in front, but you can stack them and place them behind each other. That way you will have room to see everything that you need to without having to peer around other cans or move things around just to figure out if you have something.
When you are unloading your groceries, make sure that you put everything back where it goes. If you just shove everything in your pantry real quick, then you won't be able to keep it organized. Just spend two minutes really putting everything away. Put new cans behind the old ones if you don't use the product very much so that you make sure and use the older one first.
Keep your pantry organized. It helps you to know exactly what you have and what you don't have. This way it saves you money because you don't buy something thinking that you don't have it. Plus, it looks better and is less stressful when you are trying to find something that you need for dinner that night.
