How to Alphabetize Your Fall Pantry in 2024

With the New Year fast approaching, lists of resolutions are starting to grow. Carefully organizing your home, cooking more, wasting less, ordering fewer takeout meals… Are some of these resolutions on your own list?
Today, let’s do everything we can to help you start the new year off on the right foot. Let’s look at some tips for successfully organizing your pantry. A task that can prove complex, but also has the power to provide many benefits to everyone who uses the kitchen.

The pantry: its form and content
First, how you organize your pantry and what you store in it depends entirely on the type of pantry you have at home. Indeed, each house is unique and pantries can take different forms. Here are some examples:

A cupboard;
A large cabinet;
A large walk-in closet;
A shelf;
Your kitchen cabinets;
A separate room, etc.
Moreover, you will also need to decide what you want to store in it. Of course, its contents depend, among other things, on the size of your pantry as well as the form it takes.
For example, if you have a large walk-in closet or a separate room serving as a pantry, you might want to store, in addition to your dry foods, your small kitchen appliances, your Tupperware containers, your household products, your pet’s food and accessories, etc.

Organize your pantry in 5 steps
The kitchen is one of the most used rooms in the house. That’s why it needs to be well organized, in the most optimal way possible. The same goes for the pantry… a practical space that is unfortunately too often forgotten and neglected. Let’s look at some tips that will help you not only organize your pantry, but also keep it organized in the long term.

1. Empty your pantry completely
First, take the time to completely empty your pantry. This will give you an overview of everything in it. You might be surprised by the amount of food you have! Also, take this opportunity to deep clean the space serving as your pantry. This will allow you to start your organization process on a clean slate.

2. Sort through everything
Now that everything is out of your pantry, it’s time to sort through it. To do this, plan for three distinct categories: one for products to throw away, one for products to donate, and one for what you’re keeping.
Expiration date from 2018, opened containers, sprouted potatoes… Throw away anything that’s no longer good, that has expired, or that has become damp. Certainly, this step can be discouraging as you concretely see all the products you’re wasting.

Next, set aside a box for products that you’re not going to use and that you no longer want. When things linger on the shelves for too long, it’s sometimes wiser to get rid of them by giving them to a friend, a family member, or by taking them to a food bank.

Naturally, what will remain after this sorting are the products you want to keep and put back in your pantry. Let’s see what you should do with them.

3. Categorize your products
Now that you’ve thrown away all expired products and set aside food to donate, you need to categorize the products you’re keeping into different groups. Although the classification of your food is a rather customizable process, let’s look at the categories that are usually found in pantries:

Oils and sauces;
Canned goods;
Spices;
Breakfast foods;
Baking ingredients;
Desserts;
Snacks;
Rice, pasta, and grains, etc.

Doing this classification allows you to better plan the configuration of your pantry and the space each category will require in it. It’s also important to note that your categories, depending on your culinary habits and the form your pantry takes, can greatly vary from those suggested above.

4. Store your food properly
Do you want your food to stay fresher and last longer? All you need to do is store it properly in your pantry. To do this, it’s advisable to keep your various foods in suitable containers. While utilitarian, it’s also a way to make your pantry more attractive. Let’s combine the useful with the pleasant with these storage tips:

Prefer transparent and airtight containers;
Opt for reusable containers;
Store foods like onions, garlic, and potatoes in ventilated bins;
Choose opaque or wicker baskets for surplus or less used foods, etc.

Recently, storage and organization products have become very trendy. Indeed, we are constantly bombarded with videos and images of aesthetically arranged homes, wardrobes, refrigerators, and pantries. Please note that it’s possible to organize your pantry well without spending a small fortune on expensive storage products.

Store Your Food Wisely in the Pantry

Order and cleanliness are very important in a pantry. A well-organized pantry:

Reduces food waste;
Prevents you from buying duplicate items;
Makes grocery shopping easier;
Simplifies meal planning, and so on.

When organizing a pantry, the key words are visibility, accessibility, and optimization. Let’s see what this means and how you can apply these three concepts.

First, visibility is the key to any pantry. When you can see everything you have, you’re much less likely to waste food and will be more inspired when planning meals. That’s why transparent containers are an excellent choice for storing food. Additionally, if you carefully label all your products, you’ll be able to take stock of what you own at a glance.

Moreover, your food should be easily accessible. To achieve this, set up your pantry according to your daily needs. Items you use regularly should be placed within easy reach. Do you have children and want them to be more independent? Consider placing snacks on a lower shelf so they can access them freely.

Finally, a pantry is usually a rather narrow space, which is why you need to optimize it. Hanging baskets on shelves, tiered racks for canned goods, lazy Susans for oils and condiments, adjustable shelves, wall hooks… Make sure to adapt the space to suit your needs.