Organize your pantry with a five-step makeover

We confront it every day, morning and night, for one of our most basic needs — the search for food.

If your pantry is a mess, it can bookend your day in frustration.

Fortunately, it’s one of the quickest organization projects that offers big returns in improved efficiency and peace of mind.

We have two makeover examples. The first, a floor-to-ceiling cabinet with six pull-out shelves was my challenge. The second, a closet pantry combined with a mudroom, was a neighbor’s.

It took about an hour to complete the cabinet pantry, and it took two organizers about two hours to make over the larger one. Each one, however, followed the same basic steps:

Assess your needs

Take note of what works about your pantry. Then, list the things that make you crazy about it.

Lisa Bianco, marketing director for the National Association of Professional Organizers St. Louis chapter and owner of Perfectly Organized in O’Fallon, Mo., says she starts every project with a conversation with the client about how often the items in the pantry are used and by whom.

The stuff that gets used every day needs to stay near the middle. The things that children help themselves to should be within their reach. The less often an item is used, the higher or lower up it can live.

Empty it out

The next step is to empty out the entire pantry. It sounds daunting, but it’s truly the only way to get a handle on everything that is hidden there. People will often discover they own multiples of the same product or have a backlog of expired foods.

“If you don’t see it, you won’t use it,” Bianco said. We discovered several unopened bottles of vitamins and supplements that had been purchased with good intentions but lost in the recesses of the pantry.

Sort into categories

Next, group like items. Bianco brought a few storage containers in which she grouped all the protein bars, and fruit and nut bars roaming around. She created a section for snacks, one for breakfast items, pasta and dinner, spices, grains/rice and an entire shelf for baking.

Toss the excess and expired

First, you purge, Bianco said. Get rid of things that are stale or expired. I threw out some year-old granola and half a package of stale shortbread cookies. (I don’t even like shortbread cookies.)

We also tossed the Tupperware that was missing lids and consolidated things into empty jars that kept turning up.

Put the puzzle back together

In both pantries, our organizers added a few storage baskets that grouped together certain items, such as teas, spices or lentils. In my pantry, Bianco added Lazy Susans for soup cans. She also added labels on each shelf as a reminder for everyone who uses the pantry.

In the closet pantry, they added a few more storage containers for a total cost around $45.