How to: Reorganize Your Pantry
By Helana E Brigman

With as much time as home chefs spend in their kitchens, one might imagine beautifully organized shelves with alphabetized bags of flour, extracts arranged from largest to smallest, and spices magically appearing at the front of the cabinet right when they're needed.

Let's pause for a moment and think about this image.

Why?

Almost every pantry, at all times, anywhere, is a total mess.

Sure, everyone moves into their new homes with grandiose plans for reorganizations as they transfer their belongings from old spaces to new ones, but the reality of this process requires much more thought that, if done correctly, can save you a lot of time (not to mention frustration) in the future. Whether it's color-coordinate your closets or increasing counter space, well-organized closets, like the pantry, require some help.

Here are a few mantras for reorganizing your (or any) food-based pantry into a space that is functional and as aesthetically pleasing as it can get:

1.) First, you'll just need to pull everything out. Create a clean space from which to rebuild order out of disorder.

2.) Wipe down everything and ensure that shelving is clean.

3.) Line shelves with shelving liners for a non-stick barrier between the wood, metal, or plastic of your shelves and the containers that will be sitting on them.

4.) Begin grouping your pantry items into their own categories so that when you do place food items, pans, or spices back in the pantry, you'll be more readily able to keep things organized. Here are some easy ways to group these items:

For example, if you're a baker, then each flour, grain, seed, nut, sugar, and like item should be clumped together.

All cans and jars should also be grouped.

Baking goods that are delicate and small (extracts, sprinkles, flavorings, and food colorings) should be separate from more durable items like salt and baking sodas. Additionally, you may also wish to separate cupcake liners, delicate spices and powders, and other small goods into this category.

Pans should be organized based on shape and size; for example, keep all pans together that are flat and often used for baking in their own group.

Similarly, all pots that are not flat should have their own cabinet away from flat, more stream-lined pans.

5.) Invest in your space. This means spending just a little bit of money on tools that will make your cabinet functional and lovely. Over-the-door racks, utility containers, grab baskets, and air-tight canisters can serve many functions.

Utility containers of all sizes can be used as grab baskets for small, delicate baking items like extracts, sprinkles, and food colorings.

Larger, air-tight canisters for flours, sugars, and commonly used bakery goods such as grits, corn meal, and rice can provide peace of mine in hot temperatures and bug-prone climates.

Over-the-door racks help confine spices to their own space (away from the canned goods, flours, and more). Oftentimes, the largest cause of clutter arises when spices go missing, or become jumbled up amongst the clutter of sauces and cans. By keeping spices completely separate from larger, un-related pantry items, you always know where they are. Plus, cheap over-the-door racks create new organizational space that you didn't have before.

Label makers help mark different cans and canisters with food names so that you know what's in each container.

Vertical racks made specifically for the separation of baking sheets and lids streamline the process of finding the right pan or lid.

Plastic tiered-shelving allows you to keep cans and ingredients of the same size in stackable order (so you can see something of the same height all the way in the back easily).

6.) Allocate your new groups and containers to their own shelves. For example, if organizing a four shelf pantry, you might consider the following locations.

Shelf 1 (bottom) stores cans, jars, and sauces in stackable tiered shelving.

Shelf 2 (second from bottom) stores all canisters, bakery items, pastas, grains, and the like in a left-to-right format that's grabble and easy to work with.

Shelf 3 (second from the top) stores all pans, cutting boards, and baking items in a straight up-and-down format that's grabble and clean.

Shelf 4 (top) stores kitchen gadgets that many people put on their kitchen counters, but don't regularly use. Whether it's a Foreman Grill, juicer, food processor, rice cooker, waffle maker, or fondue pot, these items belong on their own pantry shelf so your counters are clean and useful.

Helana Brigman is the creator of the award-winning blog Clearly Delicious, a food writer, photographer, and chef whose work has appeared in Louisiana Cookin' Magazine, and her column "Fresh Ideas" for Louisiana's state newspaper, The Advocate. A doctoral candidate in English, Brigman lives in Baton Rouge, LA, with her dog Eve where she writes, photographs, and eats the best of southern cooking.

Her book, The Fresh Table: Cooking in Louisiana All Year Round, will be out this March 2013 with LSU Press.

http://www.clearlydeliciousfoodblog.com/my-book/

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