Your Pantry: The place where cans of cream of mushroom soup and boxes of brown rice go to die a slow, lonely death.
Even if you are an organized person, you may have way more food than you actually need, which means it will likely expire before you get to it.
Size doesn’t matter
Large pantry, open shelving, small cabinet – it doesn’t matter what you have. We all overstock with items we will never eat and fail to remove them when they expire. Instead of solving the problem, we complain that our pantries aren’t big enough or we go out and buy organizers of every shape and design to clean up the space.
After having 10 different kitchens as an adult, I’ve come to a shocking conclusion about pantries: Size really doesn’t matter. It is all about technique – shopping and storage technique, that is.
What do you have hiding in your pantry?
Take a good look at your closet/shelf/pantry/cabinet. Follow the steps below to bring some order and remove any food that is no longer good to eat.
- Throw away any expired food and recycle the containers (this includes spices). I actually moved a large container of oatmeal from Massachusetts to Seattle 3 years ago and it is still unopened – and expired since 2006.
- Will you actually eat what’s left? Follow #1 for any food that you know you won’t eat. We stopped drinking Slim-Fast for breakfast when I gave up milk 6 months ago, and I still have 3 containers of it. Go figure.
- Can you combine any products to save space and keep items fresh? For instance, you can put all your dry spaghetti noodles into a plastic container – same with beans, rice, and other pasta. I also do this with nuts and dried fruits. Some people do this with cereal, too.
- Now that you are down to the basics, think about sorting by how you use food instead of by height or category. If you rarely use canned soup, it should be on the top shelf even though it is small. This will make it very easy for you to see when you need to replenish what you use most.
- Get a small notepad and attach adhesive to the back and stick it to the pantry door. Write down exactly what you need to buy when you first notice you need it. This will help you stay on track with your budget because you won’t buy 2 cans of tomatoes from memory and come home to find out you actually needed 2 cans of tomato paste.
Even though my “before” picture is messy, it actually only took me 20 minutes to declutter and sort. Besides the Slim-Fast that we no longer use, I found 1 big container of oatmeal, 1 bottle of lemon-pepper spice, 2 boxes of Jell-O and 3 cans of soup that had expired. That’s a lot of junk in one small cabinet.
Some shopping tips to keep your pantry from bulging:
- Buy spices in the bulk aisle. They will be fresher and cheaper than the bottles and take up less room because you only buy what you need.
- If you are organized enough, you can plan your meals in advance and shop weekly/monthly. This is hard for me, but I know several people who do this successfully. The Incredible Chef teaches classes in the Seattle area on “investment cooking.” Check your community college or personal chef association to find a similar class in your area.
- The other extreme is to shop daily or every other day so that you always have just a little bit of fresh food on hand. This is easier and more pleasant to do when you can walk to your grocery store and fairly common in larger cities.
- Have you tried online shopping? One way to keep yourself from going overboard is to use a grocery delivery service like Amazon Fresh, Safeway or Peapod for your bulk shopping. I’ve used all 3 services with success and currently use Amazon because I don’t have to be home to accept delivery. You may also have smaller delivery services available in just your area.
What did you find in your pantry? Do you have a plan to keep it clutter-free and healthy for you and your family? Let me know in the comments.
For a list of all the decluttering articles, click here.
About Betsy
Great article! So true and so funny! Why is it so hard to part with a 5 year old can of peas that we know we’ll know we’ll never eat?! It feels good to get rid of it and get organized!
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Yes! And if you "just can’t do it", the Incredible Chef has a service for you
http://tinyurl.com/cquw23
Sometimes it is easier having another person purge for you, but once you set your mind to it, I think kitchens are the easiest to declutter. It is hard to get passionate about a box of rice – it mainly stays due to apathy, not affection.
Recently I almost got rid of all our canned food I knew we’d probably never eat at a neighborhood food drive. I think it was on MLK day- yes, the Day of Service. I say "almost" because my husband pulled out two canned of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Ravioli, even though neither of us has eaten red meat for seven years!
He said he wanted them for when our niece and nephew visit (about twice a year, and they haven’t eaten them yet. Why would we feed them that?)
Too funny, Angela. I think the only reason we have so little in the way of "long lost food" is that we do move every 2-3 years. I can see where living in one place for a longer time would make it easy for Chef Boy-Ar-Dee to find a nice hiding place.
Hi Betsy…loved this article about the food pantry, which was linked to your latest post about grocery shopping!
A few things I’ve done: I love to shop in bulk, but it means I have piles of plastic bags in my pantry full of beans, grains, whole grain cereals and rice, that I can barely identify, and which get lost in the recesses. So I recently purchased a case of large ball jars, and filled them with all the pretty bulk items (including seeds, nuts, and dried fruit) and lined them up on some exposed shelving. Pretty, and now I actually eat what I bring home from the store.
I shop with basically the same ingredients list, as I have about 10 favorite dishes, most of which revolve around something over rice, salad, or a chicken-based soup.
I do a major shopping each pay-day, and during the week, I do mini-shopping trips for fresh veggies that I know I’ll eat in the next few days. Fortunately, I can walk to my local grocer for that. I HATE seeing produce rot in my fridge, and because I try to make raw foods a staple of my diet, and I like them as close to fresh as possible for maximal nutrition.
Lastly, I avoid Costco and Walmart, even though I know I’m missing out on some great deals. I save a lot of gas, and miss out on the temptation to purchase $30 worth of pine nuts I’ll never eat, even though they were cheap. It’s just my son and I. I don’t really need 40 rolls of toilet paper at a time.
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Had to laugh at the oatmeal that moved with you. I had the same experience with some popcorn. I know it moved house with me the last time too so I’d had it for just over two years here and just over three years the place before that – so at least five years. It was in tupperware so no idea when the best before date was but, in my defence, I did make some before throwing it out a few weeks ago – turns out popcorn can definitely go off. It cooked/popped well, looked lovely but a couple of mouthfuls were enough to convince me it definitely tasted strange.
Funnily enough I started a determined effort to build up a proper food stock last year so now have far more food than most people do – but I rotate it properly and, to be honest, these last few months when I haven’t had much cash, it has been great because I already have the basics on hand. I also started participating in Food Waste Friday a while back, which is hosted by the frugal girl blog – it’s amazing how much more attention you pay to using stuff up properly when you really check once a week what you have.
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Crazy to think that we keep some of these things, right?
I love Food Waste Friday. I started following Angela at My Year Without Spending and saw how low she got her food waste and it inspired us to do the same while we still lived in Seattle. Storing good basics in a pantry that will get used is not a waste of space – it’s forgetting about that popcorn/oatmeal and moving it across country that is the problem!
I’m a bit late to this post, but today I’m getting rid of a bunch of cans of beans that my ex-husband “gifted” me. I’m sure I will never truly understand the motivation behind that gift.