10 ways to Declutter your Pantry – Fast!

To set out to declutter your pantry can feel like a HUGE daunting task! It does to me anyway… I have a fairly large pantry which means I can put all sorts of clutter in there!

But getting on top of the clutter is a great way for me to feel calm, simplify my life and actually be able to find things when I need them. I’m not suggesting you do an extreme Marie Kondo, even a little bit of organising can help!

Here’s my top 10 tips to help you declutter your pantry

1. Set aside a good amount of time – around 2-3 hours to do this – knowing that this is your one priority for those hours will ease your mind of the other clutter for a short time and help you to remain calm.

2. Check the use-by and best-by dates on anything you have in your pantry that might have been there a bit too long. Get rid of anything past a use by date and commit to using up anything past it’s best before date – soon!  Also, if you have things in your pantry that you bought to try and then discovered you didn’t like them or won’t ever make the recipe that called for that specific ingredient again – throw it. Be realistic and ruthless.

3. Check your preserved goods too – those pickles that you made four summers ago are most likely past their best by date. That jam that has gone mouldy because it wasn’t sealed properly? You are never going to eat it – toss it!

4. As you create space by removing the expired items, wipe over the shelves – remove everything from each shelf and wipe the shelf clean. Add a couple of drops of vanilla or essential oils to a spray bottle with some water and not only will your pantry look great – it will smell great too.

Peppermint essential oil is great for deterring ants. If you don’t have any oil, pick some mint from the garden and steep it in boiling water. When the water has cooled, add that to your spray bottle and wipe over your shelves with it.

5. Group similar items – are your baking ingredients all over the place – do you spend too long looking for the coconut flour because it’s over there and not with the other flours you use in baking? Put all the flours together.

Similarly group together your canned vegetables, herbs, spices, dry baking inputs (sugar, icing sugar, flours, dessicated coconut), pastas, rice etc. Items like ground coffee, tea bags, chai mix and drinking cocoa can be grouped together too.

6. Use baskets or trays or similar containers to make the most of your storage space. Herbs and spices can be stacked on top of each other if you have great stackable containers or can be stored on a rack or a mini-shelf, between shelves, or in baskets, which doubles your storage space and makes them easier to access when you need them.

7. Decant dry goods into glass jars or stackable containers. Having bags of dry goods with tops folded over and a rubber band to secure them is always going to make your pantry feel messy and out of control. And for those things which you can still buy in paper they are easy for rodents to nibble into or insects like weevils to make a home in.

These days I am moving away from plastic storage tubs, although back in the day I had heaps of these which stacked nicely on top of each other. Now I choose to recycle large tall jars which, while they don’t stack on top of each other, use up a lot less space on the shelf than my old stackable plastics, and as an added bonus don’t leach BPA or other nasties into my food stores.

8. Talk to yourself as your go. Seriously! Ask yourself some probing questions:

• Do I really use this?
• How many of these do I really need?
• Would I buy this today if I didn’t already have it?
• Does this make my life easier or more enjoyable?
• Is this in good enough condition to last another 12 months or do I need to replace it with something which is made sustainable and ultimately biodegradable or recyclable?
• Does this really belong in the pantry or could I store it somewhere else which would make more sense?

9. If you store spare jars or other storage items in your pantry, go through those things as well and make sure you have lids for all of those jars. Unless you are planning on using your jars as trendy vases then without lids, they are no good, so pop them in the recycling asap.

10. Reward yourself! What great progress you have made. Take the time to enjoy a cup of coffee or chai at the end of your cleaning session – you’ve earnt it!