Having a well-organized pantry, with everything in its place, will save us a lot of time in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter whether you have a more or less spacious closet or an adjoining room that serves as an organizer; There are several keys that we can follow and take into account to make everything as structured as possible.
Knowing where each utensil and ingredient is – and having them within reach – will make our work in the kitchen much easier. So if chaos has been reigning in your kitchen for a long time and you don’t know where to start to turn the situation around, don’t worry, take note because we are going to tell you how to deal with such a daunting task.
The first thing we need to do is know our space and how we arrange it. Make a mental plan of how we can organize everything, how we want to group it. If the pantry is very messy or you’ve never really bothered to create a method, it’s best to start from scratch and start from the beginning.
So it’s time – even if it’s tedious – to empty the entire pantry. In any case, it is a practical step because it will help us, on the one hand, to thoroughly clean all the furniture that composes it – such as drawers, cabinets, shelves or auxiliary trolleys -, to see if we need to change or restore all the furniture and also pay attention to the food we store to make sure everything is in good condition and nothing has gone bad.
It’s also time to consider whether you should use insulation for the closet you’re using as a pantry or for the shelving units with vinyl. This can be very interesting because it will protect the surfaces, make them non-slip and, in addition, there are very decorative and easy to clean coatings. So it can also save you time the next time you want to clean the dust while styling it.
Once everything is well cleaned, if you need to renew some furniture, you can find on the market many very practical storage solutions with removable drawers that have a large capacity to store things or with transparent doors that we will allow you to know at any time what is happening. we stay inside; boxes of different sizes, some stackable to make better use of space or hangers to store certain kitchen utensils.
Make good use of space
Not all of us have a room off the kitchen with plenty of space to organize everything we need on a daily basis. Therefore, if we are in the situation of having a small kitchen, we will have to be very practical, functional and think of options that allow us to have all the essentials. For example, we can install adjustable shelves to change their height as we wish.
With more or less space, the most practical thing is to organize the pantry by zones and categories: you can classify the products according to the type of product you store in drinks, pasta, flours and legumes, cereals, biscuits and other breakfast products, oils, etc. or according to the packaging, or even the expiration date.
The main thing is that it is a simple formula for you and that you are rigorous when it comes to storing the things you use at all times. You have to follow a method. It is important, for example, that the ingredients or utensils you use most are within easy reach. And finally, we must not exaggerate in the number of categories we establish. It’s about making our lives easier, not more complicated.
Another tip that can be useful is to store the heaviest products – like a pot of oil or cartons of milk or bottles of soft drinks – in the central areas; This will avoid having to bend down or grab a stool to reach it when you need it, even though this piece is essential in a pantry organized high up.
Although in most brands that work with kitchen furniture we can already find endless furniture with drawers and removable drawers that have a lot of capacity and are very useful to always organize everything, we can manage perfectly using , for example, boxes to organize by category, or baskets of different sizes if you want to give it a more rustic style.
Having glass jars will also help us store pasta, legumes, flour and other foods. These types of containers will allow us to keep our ingredients much more visible, organized and to preserve them better and longer. Avoid keeping open packages even if you use tongs to close them, as they are targets for insects that will find it much easier to get inside, spoiling the food.
Put labels in your pantry
Another idea that works really well to easily see everything at a glance is labeling. It involves sticking stickers on our boxes, drawers or jars to classify everything better and not to miss anything. It’s super practical for preserving legumes or cereals that we can buy in bulk or that we will transfer from the packaging to the jar that we use to store them in our pantry.
It is true that if the bottle in question is transparent, it will be of great help to know what it contains, but labeling will be effective in many other cases. Especially when it is necessary to indicate, for example, the expiration date of the food. This is also very useful when we are going to freeze meats, fish or dishes that we have cooked at home.
Light is also a fundamental element of the pantry, especially if in your case you have a small room that you dedicate to this use. If you have natural light, you have one less thing to worry about. But otherwise, you will also have to think about installing a light point inside to be able to illuminate it at any time.
