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Are you tired of opening your pantry and feeling overwhelmed by the chaos and clutter? Trust and believe, you’re not alone. I’ve got some fresh pantry organization ideas for you, so get ready to whip your pantry into shape and make it a spot in your kitchen you don’t dread seeing. If you want to makeover your pantry without breaking the bank, now is the time to get it done with my tips.
Pantries can easily become a mess, especially if you have a busy household with lots of different foods and snacks to keep track of. But don’t worry, there are plenty of simple and effective ways to organize your pantry and create more space. Whether you have a small pantry or a large one, these ideas can help you make the most of your space and keep everything in order.
Got the organizing bug? Check out these other ideas to start your whole house on the road to being more tidy.
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1. Try this small pantry organization idea—hang chips with curtain clips.
If you can get those annoying little chip bags out of the way, it’ll free up a lot of space in your pantry. Why not hang them from the back of the pantry door? Or, a free wall inside the pantry if you’re lucky enough to have that much space.
You can get inexpensive plastic chains at Home Depot, or just repurpose an old dog leash. Then, attach curtain clips with rings onto the chain for a simple chip or snack organization system.
2. Preserve precious pantry storage space by hanging open bags.
You know those plastic hangers from Target, Walmart, Kohl’s when you buy kids’ clothes? Don’t toss them out. Repurpose them for open bag holders in your pantry. You can even use an existing hanger you from your closet, and add clothespins. Chips and pretzels are ideal candidates here. Kids’ hangers work best because they are the right size for chips, but any hanger will do.
Don’t have kids? You can buy plastic pants hangers on Amazon for a decent price.
3. Tuck bread away using a storage organizer shelf (underneath!).
Finding a home for bread where it won’t get smashed or take up too much pantry storage space is a must. Gobble up some of the space underneath a pantry shelf! Here’s an under-shelf wire basket to get you started.
You can store bread here, or you could store other oddly shaped things that make it difficult to keep your pantry tidy.
4. Turn a magazine holder into a pantry can organizer.
It’s almost like magazine holders were made for small canned goods. Stack cans of tomato paste, sauce, or other smaller cans on their sides, and when you pull one out, the others will drop down to feed a new one into the first position. If your magazine holder isn’t big enough to stack cans on their sides, these holders are still a great way to corral cans nightside up.
If your magazine holder has an open front design, just attach rubber bands or wire across the front to hold the cans in place.
5. Repurpose soda or sparkling water boxes as canned food organizers.
As long as you cut the top corner of the soda box, you’ve got a canned food organizer. Now if you’d like to pretty it up with wrapping paper, contact paper, or the like, I hope you’ll have at it!
This particular canned food idea is best for food storage and stocking up. It would be too big of a pain to dump out all the cans to find the one you want. I recommend a box for each type of soup or veggies that you store.
Need to stock up? Check out these soup or soda coupons.
6. Mesh magazine holders are good for storing onions and potatoes.
Say no to loose onions and potatoes rolling around in your pantry. A wire or clear magazine holder can keep them contained and allow you to see when you need to buy more.
Just keep potatoes and onions a safe distance away from each other (not touching). The ethylene gas in onions will make potatoes and any other fresh produce nearby rot faster.
Learn more tips to make fresh produce last longer.
7. Another produce pantry idea: Use mesh laundry bags to store potatoes and onions.
Mesh laundry bags (technically, clothespin bags), are a great idea for storing onions and potatoes — especially if you can hang them inside your pantry where it’s dark and cool. Affix command hooks to your pantry wall or door in order to hang the bags.
Get produce coupons for your next shopping trip.
8. Use a bin as a pantry shelf organizer and condense the space your cereal boxes consume.
We all know kids can’t close cereal boxes correctly. Either they don’t even try, or the cereal gets smashed down in the box so the flaps don’t even touch.
No more. Recycle those cereal boxes the first time they’re opened and store cereals in the bag inside a slotted plastic storage basket that can double as a pantry shelf organizer. Get some clothespins and, just like that, no more cereal box disaster in your pantry.
Label the clothes pins or clips if you want to make it easy to see all your cereal.
9. Turn a file holder into a food organizer.
This pantry organization idea works the very best with boxes of pasta. Think: spaghetti, lasagna noodles, fettuccini, that sort of thing. Get a few cardboard file holders from Dollar Tree, turn them on their side so the opening is at the bottom, and you’ve got a handy little spot for those hard-to-stack boxes.
10. Make your own over-the-door pantry organizer with a shoe organizer.
Just hang a shoe organizer over the back of your pantry door to organize snacks. Not only does this make snacks easily accessible, but you’ll quickly be able to see what needs replenishment. This trick isn’t just for snacks, either! You can store any small items that otherwise get lost in the back of the pantry.
11. Convert a used egg carton into a K-Cup organizer.
Sure, you could buy a K-Cup organizer on Amazon. But why spend the money? Instead, hang on to old egg cartons. When they’re empty, cut off the lids and line them up side by side to create a free K-Cup organizer. You could even stack them on top of each other if you don’t need to see the different flavors.
Related: See all Keurig deals (including coupons for K-Cups).
12. Use a Lazy Susan cabinet organizer for deep shelves or hard-to-reach corners.
If you’re looking for solutions to organize the corner of a pantry, or if you have really deep pantry shelves, a Lazy Susan turntable is your answer.
Because you can spin it around, you can easily see what you have in those dark corners. This works as a canned food organizer, or for items that are weirdly shaped and don’t fit nicely on the shelves.
13. Tackle your pantry organization so it’s sorted by food category and use labels.
I think many people do this naturally: put the baking stuff on one shelf, the cereal on another, etc. But why not add some bins or baskets and label it all?
This way nobody can come running to you claiming they can’t find the Ritz crackers. The more you can automate in your house, the better. Labels are magical for this reason.
Use a label maker or inexpensive white paper tags. You can get as fancy as you want, but trust me, use labels and you’ll get less requests to come and find things for people. Which means more time focused on your own tasks. Or reading a novel.
14. Attach clear bins to create pantry wall organizers.
By now you probably know that utilizing wall space is key to keeping your pantry organized. How many tiny little things do you have floating around on shelves, on the floor maybe? Kool-Aid singles, spice packets, and little packets of yeast get lost like it’s their full-time job in my pantry.
The best solution I’ve found? These attachable clear bins. They have adhesive on the back, so you just peel and stick.
15. Pin sandwich bag boxes to the wall to save shelf space.
Pinning sandwich bag boxes is a genius pantry organization idea. It’ll save valuable space on your shelves and eliminate all those boxes toppling over on each other.
Granted, you may need to reinforce the lids with duct tape where the seam is so it doesn’t tear off the first time someone reaches in.
See all trash bag and Ziploc coupons.
16. Dollar Tree pantry organization is the best way to save money.
Look for plastic bins, laundry baskets, jars with lids, metal containers, and more the next time you’re at Dollar Tree. If you only spend $1.25 on each item, you can probably outfit your whole pantry with storage containers for $15–$30, depending on how large your pantry is. Don’t worry about colors or any of that. Almost everything you find at the Dollar Tree can be painted or spray painted to match.
17. Use bins as a snack organizer to prep kid lunches.
Sure, you can prep your kids’ lunches easier this way. But how about automating lunch prep instead? The key here is to organize all the food items and snacks so that your kids can pack their own lunches.
The best approach is to pre-package everything, and put it in sandwich bags in quantities you want. Then sort the sweets so they’re in one bin, salty snacks or protein snacks in another, fruit in another. And then tell them they have to (or they can only) take one item out of each bin.
If these bins are on a shelf in the pantry the kids can reach, your job here is done.
18. Want the best of all pantry shelving ideas? Tiered shelves!
If you cut through everything and whittle it down to the main point of pantry organization, I’d say it’s the ability to actually see what you have. And to create more space. But seeing what you have on hand saves so much time.
Tiered shelf organizers help you to do this, so instead of cans lined up behind or stacked on top of one another, you can see rows of them. This is most crucial if you have a lot of different kinds of cans in your pantry. (If they’re all the same soup or the same can of vegetables, you don’t need to see them, and stacking is probably fine).
19. Now for a grocery list organizer—attach a grocery list and a weekly menu on the pantry door.
All that’s left is to fill up that now-organized and roomy pantry! The best way I’ve found to keep track of what we need at the grocery store is to hang a list up on the outside of the pantry door. (You could hang it up on the inside of the door, unless that spot’s already taken!)
Everyone in my family writes down what they think we need next time someone makes a run to the store. You’ll have to weed through the kids’ scribbled requests for new LEGOs or a puppy a few times (is that just my kids?!), but soon it’ll work like magic. Why not add the weekly menu to the door while you’re at it? Look at you, so organized!
Related: Check out our grocery list organizer and weekly meal printable.
