5 Pantry Organization Mistakes You Are Probably Making

Ever feel like dinnertime is chaotic? If you find yourself frantically running in circles trying to get dinner on the table, you need these pantry organization tips.

You may think that meal planning is all you need to make dinner in a cinch, but the truth is that in order to plan your meals effectively, you first need to have an organized pantry.

Last week, I helped my friend Bibi organize her kitchen pantry. Bibi has 3 children, all under 6, and she spends her days developing strategies to grow both of her businesses: a Real Estate agency and a property investments company. So if she’s not showing or listing houses for sale, she’s meeting contractors to evaluate her next property flipping project.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

With three kids under 6 and two companies under her belt, you guessed it: keeping the pantry organized is a challenge, and therefore dinnertime is always hectic. With this project, I was able to point out 5 pantry organization mistakes she was making that were slowing her down when cooking her meals.

These are:

  1. Failing to identify family needs
  2. Not categorizing the food
  3. Keeping too many boxes
  4. Storing the wrong things
  5. Not setting the rules

1. Failing to Identify the Family Needs

When I first opened the pantry, I fainted. Just kidding, but almost! I asked her first a simple question.

Q: How often do you cook pasta? 

Very often.

Q: So why in the world is it hiding in the back behind the glass jars?  And what are the Oreos doing under the instant ramen soup? And why are the Ritz Crackers falling over the jars? 

A: I try to keep the cookies and snacks on a top shelf so the kids don’t grab them easily.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Her mistake here was not identifying her needs. If she cooks pasta often, then the pasta should be stored towards the front of the shelf, and at eye level. The cookies, crackers, and other snacks should be stored together on a separate shelf.

2. Not Categorizing The Food

She tried to keep the cookies out of easy reach from the kids, but she wasn’t implementing any system. Everything was put anywhere, on any shelf. When food is not sorted by categories, finding what you need is almost impossible. Not to mention, keeping track of your pantry inventory, or simply writing a shopping list becomes a challenge.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Categorizing food makes it easier to find what you need when you need it. Especially if your pantry, such as this one I worked on, has deep shelves and no pull-out drawers. Here are the categories I came up with:

Pasta & Sauces

In the picture below, the pasta might look like it’s hiding in the back of the shelf, but moving the lasagna box to the front, will reveal the box’s name behind it. Every box behind those is the same type of pasta. Rigatoni behind rigatoni, rotini behind rotini, shells behind shells, and so on. That way, she can see at a glance how many boxes of each type of pasta she has. Her words were: ‘I didn’t know I had so much!’  – Three packets of small pasta (alphabet letters for soup) are contained inside an unutilized stainless steel utensil holder.

On the left, I stored all the jars and cans of sauce and cans of diced tomatoes. See a pattern here? Whenever she wants to make an Italian dinner night, one trip to the pantry and she can pull out the ingredients in seconds.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Canned Goods

Still looking at the picture above, you can see how I sorted all the can goods in lines. Everything behind each can is the same product (like in a store). She didn’t know she had 7 cans of corn, 5 of chickpeas, 4 of black beans, and the last 4 is a mix of chili beans, red beans, and white beans. Easy right? On the right, I made rows of canned soup and canned fish.

Rice & Other Grains

Continuing with the system of lines, I placed 6 boxes of brown rice on the left, followed by a bag of rice (eventually, it will be stored in an airtight container). A small bin from the Dollar Tree holds a few bags of lentils, quinoa, instant soup, and two small wheat salad boxes. See what I did here? I contained small bags and items that make clutter in one single bin. Accessing those is very easy, and the shelf looks clean and spacious.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Breakfast Goods and other Condiments

This last shelf holds cereal boxes, oatmeal, plenty of jelly and preserves for a year (she must belong to the Jelly Club), and other condiments (like mayo, mustard, salad dressing) that once are opened, have to go in the refrigerator. While she keeps cooking oils inside a cabinet near the stove, I suggested she kept the extra one in the pantry too.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

3. Keeping too many boxes

Boxed food takes up a lot of space. And she had way too many boxes. Whenever possible, discard as many boxes as you can and place the contents inside small bins. Bibi was ready, and she had a stack of dollar store locker bins waiting for me.

Inside the bin on the left, I placed 36 packs of gummies, 12 packs of raisins, and 4 packs of pretzels. The bin on the right holds 27 single packs of potato chips. These two bins fit perfectly on that top shelf away from kids’ reach, but it is easy enough for her to pull them out when packing lunchboxes.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Another four of these dollar store bins help contain more snacks. Single packs of crackers are easy to store; everything inside that bin was in 4 separate cardboard boxes. Some people like to keep the boxes to have access to ingredients, allergy information, expiration dates, etc. I usually cut out the top of the box with the expiration date and tuck it inside the bin.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

For Bibi, that wasn’t important since crackers go fast in her household. Now those Oreo cookies, biscotti, and more chips are contained too.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

4. Storing the Wrong Things

If you take a close look at this before picture, you can see gift bags peeking out of the bottom shelf. Once we identified her needs (mistake #1) we concurred that the pantry isn’t the place to store gift bags and other party supplies.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

That bottom shelf is prime real estate in the pantry where you can store things like tablecloths and placemats.

Tips for Sorting Non-Essentials

We moved the gift bags to a separate cabinet with even more party and entertaining supplies. So the pantry organization turned into organizing another two sets of cabinets.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Cabinet 1 holds arts & crafts supplies. This is a cabinet right above a built-in desk where the kids do their homework.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

Cabinet 2, holds all party supplies and paper goods.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.
Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.

5. Not Setting Rules

Once we organized the entire pantry, Bibi sighed and hoped she could always keep it that way. So, I said to her: your decluttering and organizing efforts will be worthless if you don’t set rules.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.
After

While I can not guarantee Bibi that her pantry will always look like it does now, I can guarantee that it will never look like it did before, if and only if she sets some rules and they are followed.

Is dinnertime chaotic in your household? Find out if you are making these 5 pantry organization mistakes.
Before

Simple rules like:

  1. Always taking the time to store the groceries where they belong as soon as they’re brought home.
  2. Make a pantry inventory at least once a month to avoid buying too many duplicates (aka 10 cans of corn)
  3. Asking family members to put things back exactly where they belong.

If you find that you are making any of these mistakes, fix them now with our pantry organization tips, and you will see how you will find yourself meal planning more often, and dinnertime will be less chaotic in your home.