Pantry Organizing

How many times has the following happened to you? You open your pantry to find some ingredient or group of items that you need for dinner, and you can't seem to find it? You then run over to the store to get that specific ingredient, and end up buying more than you intended. After getting home, and putting all the items away, you end up find that "missing" ingredient that you had to run out and get?

This is a fairly common occurrence if you have a disorganized pantry. Taking a little time to do some proper pantry organizing can help prevent this common problem from recurring. What this means is that you will have more time, and money, for doing other things in life—like making that perfect dinner for your significant other.

1. Plan. Before beginning, take a look at your pantry. Either take a picture or draw a rough outline of what your pantry space looks like. Using the picture plan out where you want everything to go. An example is to plan areas for your vegetables, canned meats, boxed meals, and cake mixes. This helps you to know where you can find what you are looking for and makes the organization task a whole lot easier.
2. Remove. It is time to remove all the existing items from the pantry. This gives you a blank slate to work with when organizing your pantry.
3. Separate. As you remove the items from the pantry, take the time to separate everything according to the plan you drew up earlier. Set everything off to the side, either on your kitchen table or countertop, and keep each item separated from those that are not the same.
4. Discard. Take a moment to see if everything is within their expiration date. If it is not, throw it away. There is no use in allowing something that you cannot eat to take space up in your pantry.
5. Clean. Go ahead and clean your pantry. Having a properly cleaned pantry will help prevent any pest or rodent problems. In addition, it will keep the dust and grime down to a minimum.
6. Implement. Go ahead and implement your organization plan from step 1. This means that you can go ahead and place everything into their specific areas that you have planed out.
7. Maintain. After putting your organization plan into effect, it is time to maintain it. If you do not maintain the plan that you have in place, you will simply end up with the same problem that you had before, and having to do all the work all over again.