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Organization, Wellbeing · February 16, 2022

Pantry Organization and Meal Planning

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The kitchen is often the hardest place clean and organize in the home. It’s so easy to accumulate lots of food, containers and junk. It becomes a catch-all area of the home. The way food is stored is important to prevent spoilage, bacteria and waste but it also can make a huge difference on how your kitchen functions and how clean and tidy it looks.

Here you will find a free guide to completely declutter and organize your pantry, refrigerator and freezer. It urges you to consider what is important and meal plan to prevent the clutter from accumulating.

I recently did a 30 day no spend challenge where I went through my pantry and used up as much as I could. I had so many jars full of food that was rarely used in my regular meal rotations. I also had packets of food that I regularly use that I wanted to store in the jars instead. By the end of this challenge, I felt it was a good start but, there was food I was storing that I knew I would never get around to using up.

For reference, I made a list of all the essentials I use on a regular basis. You can use this list for reference, but you will probably find mine are different to your essentials. Consider what you use regularly and make a list.

Click Image to Download PDF

Declutter & Organize Your Refrigerator & Freezer

  1. Take everything out and put it on a clear flat space, such as a table
  2. Go through each item and throw away anything that has expired
  3. Go through each item a second time and ask yourself if you or anyone in your household will actually eat it.
  4. Throw away anything you will not eat or give it to someone else that will.
  5. Clean your refrigerator and freezer
  6. Decide how you want to store your food – you can label the door shelves with labels such as condiments, drinks, dairy.
  7. Find containers to store items:
  • I love these for storing jarred and loose items.
  • This container for storing eggs
  • These pull-out drawers for storing dairy and cold meats
  • Containers for storing leftovers
  • Jars for juices and milk

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As you are going through your items, you can use this grocery shopping list to write down anything you are low on.

Click image to download PDF

Declutter and Organize Your Pantry

Here is a checklist for reference to go through each item:

Click image for PDF download
  1. Again, take everything out and put it on a flat clear space.
  2. Is there anything that has expired?
  3. Is there food you know your or someone else will not eat? Can you donate anything to a food bank?
  4. Don’t forget to add anything you are low on to the grocery list.
  5. Think about how to organize your pantry:
  • These containers are great space savers to organize your pantry.
  • Consider labelling containers for efficiency.
  • Use wire baskets to store onions, garlic and potatoes. These should be stored separately as they produce moisture and will spoil each other.
  • Use clear containers to store snacks and surplus food.
  • I use a spice rack like this one for easy access. It limits me on how many I own too. I buy spices in bulk and top these up when needed.

6. Clean inside and outside your cupboards and/or pantry.

7. Fill your containers, label them and put them back in a way that is efficient. I use a Dymo label maker to label everything in my kitchen for consistency.

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Planning Ahead

Meal planning is a great way to reduce food waste, spending and decision fatigue. I plan my meals every Sunday and only order what is necessary. I tend to plan meals that use similar ingredients throughout the week too, to ensure I use fresh produce up. I save so much money by planning meals ahead of time. I also eat much healthier food.

I use Notion to store all the meals I make with a list of ingredients assigned to each meal (I’ll do a separate post about this). I allocate meals to each day and a whole list of ingredients is generated. I look through my kitchen to see what I already have and use my grocery list to write down anything I need. I’ll then go through any cleaning supplies, drinks and snacks that I might need and add it to my list. I keep the grocery list on my refrigerator so I had to make sure it was pretty!

You can download this meal planner for free here.

Posted By: Sara · In: Organization, Wellbeing

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Trackbacks

  1. 7 Pantry and Food Organization Ideas - Your Inner Spaces says:
    February 28, 2022 at 2:34 pm

    […] The first step to any organized pantry and kitchen is to declutter, I have created a full step by step guide to declutter your pantry and every space in hour kitchen where you store food here. […]

  2. 7 Genius Ways to Organize Food - Your Inner Spaces says:
    February 28, 2022 at 2:54 pm

    […] The first step to any organized pantry and kitchen is to declutter, I have created a full step by step guide to declutter your pantry and every space in hour kitchen where you store food here. […]

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