Kitchen Pantries - A Place for Everything

I think one of the favorite sayings of all professional organizers is "A place for everything and everything in it's place."  It applies to every organizing situation and if you only remember this strategy, it can put you on the right track.  But I think this is especially poignant for kitchen pantries.  Kitchen pantries are one of the most used areas in a busy household.  Whether you like to cook or not, people have to eat and they need a place to put all their food in the meantime.  Food comes in, food goes out.  It's a mini grocery store, but most people don't organize it like that.

I recently worked with a client who needed some help with her pantry.  It was stressing her out, but she didn't even know where to begin.  It had been ages since she'd cleaned it out and the top shelf had become a catch-all that stalled any intimidated attempts that she made.

We started by taking everything out.  We put it into piles that would help us reorganize later - dinner items, cleaning supplies, dog items, stuff to put some place else, recycling, etc.  Since it had been a while since she had done this, we were able to cut out a lot of the clutter simply because the food item had expired.

Then we revamped her existing pantry shelves.  She had the simple wire shelving that many homes have.  While shelves of any kind are a necessity, sometimes the wire shelving for a pantry can be troublesome.  It doesn't allow things to slide easily and sometimes causes jars and cans to tip over if they aren't positioned just right.  To remedy this, we used foam board and contact paper and fit it to her existing shelves.  Not only does this allow things to slide easily, it cheered up her sterile pantry space!

Then I bought some clear pantry/fridge bins in a couple different sizes.  Bins that fit the depth of your shelf and slide make it easy for you to access things that must go in the back of the pantry.  I also bought two, stand-alone mesh shelves to make use of vertical space.  I created cute chalkboard-esque labels that matched the motif of the contact paper and put them in the proper places.  Labels are a must in a pantry that is accessed by more than one family member!  How can anyone help you keep things organized if you are the only person who knows where things go?  Labels make it clear to everyone that SALTY SNACKS GO HERE!

We put all of the appropriate items back into the pantry and voila!  A beautifully organized space to help nourish her family.  I'm happy to report that the messy top shelf no longer appears in her nightmares.