How Organizing Your Pantry Can Make You Healthier

Whether you have a small pantry or a walk-in pantry, organizing it is key to healthy eating. In fact, auditing and organizing your pantry is something you should do regularly. An orderly pantry allows you to save money, save time, reduce food waste and make better food choices.

Healthy eating is probably one of your goals for taking control of your hormones. An organized pantry could actually be the first practical step in the right direction.

At one point, weight loss shows were really popular. If you’ve ever watched one, you probably noticed that one of the first things that a personal trainer or fitness guru does is visit the person’s kitchen and remove all of the junk food. Your kitchen and pantry are the physical foundation of the choices you make about your health.

I was in the process of moving when I first started working on my pantry, so that gave me a clean slate. My current pantry isn’t huge, but you don’t need a large pantry to make it Pinterest-worthy.

It also helped that Getting Organized had just aired, when I started organizing. I may or may not have been one of the maniacs that was at the Container Store buying the last of some of their items.

However it happened, I’m thankful that I made the time and money investment. Not only does the space look visually appealing, but it’s also functional. Organizing your food storage space can actually improve your quality of life.

Bulk Food Storage Containers

I prefer glass canister storage containers for their durability. They’re also easy to clean and most are even dishwasher safe. Here are some options:

3 Reasons to Organize Your Pantry

1. Reduces food waste. Do you find yourself throwing away food every week? Do you have unused expired items that you planned to use at some point but forgot about? Guilty! And Guilty!

   While cleaning my pantry, I discovered several types of flour and bags of rice that had pests in them. I also found duplicates of many items that I doubt I’ll get around to using. I can recall many times when I made the comment, “there’s nothing here to eat” or “I need some more…” when all along I had items hanging out in the back.

2. Improves visibility of your healthy options. Remember, out of sight, out of mind. This plays into my first point. If you can’t see that you have 3 containers of egg white protein powder or 2 boxes of gluten-free crackers hanging out on that back shelf, you forget about it.

   Not only do we forget about the better food choices, but we also tend to put the less healthy choices in the front. And we usually don’t forget about those.

3. Meal planning and prepping are easier. This has by far been one of my biggest takeaways. It’s so easy to scan my pantry and plan meals based on what I already have.

   Creating a grocery list is so much more efficient because I can easily see what’s in stock without digging around for things that I think I may already have. It also saves me time and money because I’m not repurchasing things that I already have.

Storage bins give everything a place and a boundary:

Tips for Organizing Your Pantry

1. Take everything out. This is going to be the worst part of this endeavor. But this is a crucial step because you’re able to touch everything that’s there and determine what needs to be thrown away or donated.

2. Research your container options online. I already had some containers from a failed pantry organization attempt a year or two ago, so I knew I wanted to continue to use the same container styles. Sometimes you can find a few options at Ross and Marshalls, but you would probably need to visit these stores frequently to piece together all of the containers you need. I highly recommend using clear containers that make it easy to spot things.

3. Order more containers than you think you need. It’s highly likely that even with your thorough planning, you’ll still need more than you planned for. Also, during the process, you may realize that there’s a section or two that you want to make space for in anticipation of buying more items.

4. Create a space for EVERYTHING. Commit everything to its own space. Even if that means that one of your containers only has one or two pantry items in it. This brings me to my next point.

5. Don’t buy more food just to fill your pantry. I get that those #organizationgoals and #pantrygoals post have sections with 10 containers of oatmeal, but in real life it’ll probably take you months to go through two cannisters of oatmeal. Remember, we’re trying to reduce food waste. The goal of your pantry is to be functional not necessarily the most beautiful one.

Don’t forget your labeling tools:

Remember to add some functional details to your pantry. Don’t forget the stepping stool and child scissors for the little ones. Make accessing what you need easy for the entire family – even the littles.

I didn’t use a fancy shelf liner, but I might go back and change it out at some point. I kept it basic for now.

I don’t recommend self-adhesive ones. They look great and give you a nice flat, non-sliding cover, but I worry that they might peel the paint up once you remove them. I also suspect that they might be difficult to remove.

Thank you for reading this post. If you made it to the end, I really appreciate it and hope that this post was helpful for you. You can also find some of the foods I keep in my pantry in this post.

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