Organize Your Pantry in Five Easy Steps

When we moved into our dream home a few months ago, I finally had ample pantry space, but not ideal function. The puppy regularly helped himself to bread and graham crackers from the shelves, while somehow my kids couldn’t find anything themselves. We needed an organizational intervention.

Enter Gina Leo, a Kansas City local, professional home organizer and owner of Sunny Spaces LLC. As I scrolled her Instagram feed, I was immediately drawn to the luxurious spaces and her eye for design. She helps clients create spaces that are not only functional but also calming and beautiful. I reached out for a consultation, and Gina came over to evaluate my space.

As a disclosure, I received design services from Sunny Spaces in exchange for this blog post.

While I was overwhelmed (and honestly a little embarrassed) by my pantry disarray, Gina was invigorated. She immediately brought an energy and excitement to the project, leaving me with no doubt that things were headed in a much tidier direction.

While Gina and Nicole leveled up my pantry and kitchen workflow, I documented their process to share with you here.

First, they removed every item from my pantry, explaining this helps you get honest about what truly belongs there and eliminate things that don’t belong. They wiped down all pantry surfaces, leaving me with an empty space and a completely clean slate.

Sunny Spaces then followed this five-step process for organizing my pantry:

Sort:

Group like items with like items. First, create broad categories, and then move onto sub-categories. For example, create a broad grab-and-go category. Then, based on what you have there, you may want to divide items into ‘salty’ and ‘sweet’ grab-and-go items to be more specific.

Edit: 

Make piles of expired items or those you don’t use often. Get rid of packaging and recycle plastic containers and cardboard boxes.

Purge:

Create designated areas for trash and donation. Trash items that are expired. If you don’t use something often or have excess, donate still-usable food to a local food bank. Find the food bank nearest you here.  Purging is important because of the 80/20 rule: 20 percent of your space should be free for breathing room. A space can be well-organized but still feel cluttered due to too many items. Having 20 percent free space makes it feel luxurious. For example, Sunny Spaces decided that having no appliances on the floor would make the pantry appear more spacious. They created in zones for my kitchen cabinetry to better accommodate my workflow (how I use the kitchen), resulting in increased storage to tuck those appliances away instead!

Contain:

Select a main style of basket you love to hold the bulk of your items. This creates a consistent feel to have the same material throughout. Sunny Spaces selected these large clear plastic storage bins and large natural water hyacinth bings these water hyacinth bins to contain my items. They advise limiting the textures and colors you include in your pantry for consistency. Draw from three to four of the following textures/colors such as: acrylic/plastic, bamboo, water hyacinth, woven and glass.  For example, my pantry colors are white, clear and warm wood tones. My textures are bamboo, water hyacinth and acrylic.

Label: 

Clearly label every purposefully-created grouping. By this point in the process, my pantry already looked like a dream and I literally thought it could not get any better. But choosing the custom font and seeing the labels applied to each container was the icing on the cake. No more kids hollering from the pantry at me because they can read and find the things! For me, the labels serve to remind me what’s in the up-high baskets, and moving forward, will help me to keep things organized by putting everything back in its place.

I could not be more thrilled with Sunny Spaces organization of my space! The kitchen is the central hub of our home, so there is huge value in having this space designed efficiently and beautifully.

To learn more about their services, visit here and book a 15-minute phone consultation.