Find Food Fast: Five Tips for Organizing Your Pantry

by Stacey Agin Murray

It can be a cupboard in your apartment, a shelving unit in your garage, or a separate room in your house. Whatever it looks like, a pantry acts as a functional space for storing canned goods, baking supplies and anything you just HAD to buy during that last triple coupon offering at your local supermarket. If you need to prepare meals in a jiffy, it's time to stock up on non-perishable food items and create an organized area for them. Here are five easy ways to get your food pantry organized.

Use Helper Shelves

Helper shelves double the horizontal space in your pantry, offering more space for canned goods, boxes, bottles, etc. They often come in three or four different widths and heights. Some are even width-adjustable. Helper shelves can be found in the same aisle as other kitchen organizing products and purchased at general stores like Target in the U.S., or Canadian Tire and Home Depot in Canada. They can also be purchased at specialty stores.
Helper Shelves = Saving Space

Group 'Like-Foods' Together

For easy retrieval, group different foods and products by type, brand, or ethnicity. For example: Place all canned fruit in one area, brownie mixes on another part of the shelf, and all spaghetti sauce jars and boxes of pasta on a shelf separate from the other two. Now go to your pantry and gather ingredients for tonight's lasagna dinner. How quickly did you locate the pasta and sauce? Probably, much faster now that they're grouped together in one place
Grouping 'Like-Foods' Together = Saving Time

Keep it Neat and Orderly

Place cans/ jars/ bottles on shelves with labels facing front. Line up boxes with their 'spines' facing front (like library books) or facing forward depending upon your space limitations. This way you can scan the shelves quickly and find what you need in a matter of seconds. Disorganized shelves are a big time, money, and food waster.
Orderly Shelves = Saving Time and Money

Take Inventory

Before you go to the supermarket, take inventory of your pantry shelves. Helpful hint: Line up your cans, jars and bottles from the back of the pantry shelf to the front edge with labels facing forward. Depending upon their size as well as the size of the shelf, you may be able to line them three to four deep. When you need a can/jar/bottle, take it from the front. When you see you have one left (hugging the back wall of the pantry), it's time to add that item to your shopping list.
Taking Inventory = Saving Money

Rotate Your Food

How many times have you found cans or boxes of food languishing behind an extra large cereal box? You don't know how long it's been there and you're not planning on serving botulism for dinner, so that old can of peas you unearthed is money down the drain.

Whether you line them up one in front of the other or stack them, it is important to rotate your boxes, cans and packages of food. If you usually buy cans of tuna in bulk and stack them six-high on your shelf, don't pile five new ones on top of the bottom can. Put that bottom can in the fridge or stack the new ones behind the old stack.

You can take it a step further and date your canned and boxed goods. It takes a bit of work but it's worth it. Even non-perishables can perish.
Rotating Food = Saving Money

Stacey Agin Murray, professional organizer and owner of Organized Artistry, LLC, transforms mess into masterpiece with patience, organizing know-how, and a sense of humor. Stacey specializes in home organization, time and paper management. For a free e-list of Top Ten Tips for Organized Living, please visit her web site at http://www.organizedartistry.com. Email: stacey@organizedartistry.com