How to organize a pantry

How to organize a food pantry with deep wire shelves. Find pantry organization hacks and container ideas that can be purchased on Amazon.

Come take a look at how I turned our messy unorganized food pantry into a well-organized pantry. I can't believe I'm putting pictures of my messy pantry up for you all to see, but here it is.

I have tried in the last 10 months about 5 times to organize this pantry with no luck. We have a pretty good size pantry but as you can see things kept piling up on the floor.

Then last week after coming home with groceries I couldn't stand it anymore. So I pulled everything out of the pantry and started organizing it.

If you like how I organized our Pantry you may also enjoy my Easy to Organize A Baking Center and my Spice Storage idea blog post. 

How To Start Organizing A Food Pantry

In order to get a mess organized, you must make a mess, and that is what I did. Everything ended up in the dining room or kitchen.  

As I took the food out of the pantry I made categories around the dining room of how I wanted everything to go back into the pantry.

Breakfast foods would be grouped together, baking needs would be together, meal side's like pasta's and rice would be together, and cooking wines and sauce's together.

I had all my extra baskets/containers out so I knew what I had and they were ready to be used. This was also a good time to check to see what food was expired and trash it.

As I was cleaning I found quite a few things that were opened of the same food. This just showed me that the pantry was in desperate need of organizing.

Adding More Shelves

After I emptied the pantry I did a good cleaning to the floor. Then I talked my wonderful hubby into installing another shelf.

We found what we were looking for at Home Depot, and they were able to cut the shelf to the length we need.

One of the things I don't like about the wire shelf is the gaps, I have tried using boxes as shelf liners but things still didn't sit well on the shelf.

My original thought was to have pieces of thin wood as shelf liners, but  I found these liners which I totally love. 

I like how they hook onto the shelf so the liner won't move. They are easy to clean and hold up very well from wear and tear.

A Well Organized Pantry

The extra shelf helps a lot with getting things up off the floor. I was able to put foil pans, my glass container of cookie cutters, my recipe box, and extra baking needs all on this shelf.

Under the bottom shelf, I have a couple of wooden crates. One store's larger items like 2-liters and the other store's my extra cookbooks. The basket holds paper goods, these are for the kids to use for school lunches.

I bought these Rubbermaid food containers to hold some of the food like pasta and rice, I really love the openness of these. I made labels for the front of each container to label what is in it.

These wonderful can organizers are useful for storing the cans so I know what I have. They are the best investment I could have ever made for the pantry.

I store all soups and baking things in one, and the other I have tomato sauces, canned tomatoes, and refried beans. 

I have a love of baskets so of course, I had to use some to store odd things like gravy packages and cooking wines.

Snack storage

Each of my kids have a snack basket, this helps to keep food out of their rooms and also with arguing over who got more snacks.

I have tried many different baskets over the years but didn't like how they took up room on the shelf.I found this three-tier basket unit at Hobby Lobby, I absolutely love it. It fits so well in the little space in the pantry. 

Each basket has a tag that has the first initial of each child on it, and they are in birth order as well.

Next, to this, I have a basket full of cracker snacks. I buy crackers such as goldfish in bulk, I then take the time to portion out the crackers into snack size baggies. This helps with portion control which helps with making food last a little longer.

This basket is free range for all the kids. We even have a few neighbor kids that know about the snack basket.

Sharing One Creative DIY project at a time~ Jen

Other My Creative Manner articles you may like are:

• Spice Storage Idea
• Bakers Dozen
• How to do a water test in an Instant Pot
• Baking Essentials