What if I told you there’s a secret weapon to successful and efficient cooking and baking?
Better yet, what if I showed you how to leverage this secret tactic to help you get homemade meals on the table more often, and much faster?
My motto is “a place for everything and everything in its place.” This is how I organize my kitchen, which includes the fridge, freezer, pantry, and all other food cupboards.
Keeping my kitchen organized and well-stocked means I’m always ready to quickly throw together a homemade meal to feed my family. It’s saved me many times over the years when I’ve come home after a busy day without a meal plan prepared.
I’m going to break down why you need to invest the time into organizing your kitchen, and how to undertake an organization project.
You can skip ahead to certain sections of this article:
- 5 Reasons Why Your Kitchen Needs TLC
- The Supplies You’ll Need for This Project
- Organizing Your Food Pantry & Cupboards
- Organizing Your Fridge
- Organizing Your Freezer
- Labelling Tips & Tricks
- Maintaining Your Organized Kitchen
It’s time to get your pantry working for you!
5 Reasons Why Your Kitchen Needs TLC
With so many things going on in your busy family life, you may not consider organizing your kitchen a high priority.
But investing the time to get your pantry into shape is important, and it will make running your day-to-day life much smoother.
Here are 5 reasons why you should invest the time in organizing your kitchen:
1. Save time in the long run
A little time upfront means time saved every day when you’re no longer sifting through the unnecessary clutter to find items you need. You will be able to prepare meals faster when you can easily access your ingredients.
2. Make meals and snack time easier
A well-stocked pantry makes it easy to whip up last-minute meals. You’ll have more options for cooking and baking without having to run out to the store.
3. Make meal planning and grocery shopping more efficient
Writing your shopping list is easy when you can see what you already have. You’ll probably be going to the store less, as you’ll often only need to stock up on fresh meats, dairy, and produce. Menu planning is also an easy task when you’re already organized!
4. Reduce your food waste
Don’t let old food items expire. Save yourself time and money, and help reduce unnecessary food waste when you know what you already have. No more accidentally buying duplicates at the store when you can’t remember what you have at home!
5. Teach your kids life skills
Get your kids involved in this project, so they can learn valuable organization and planning skills. When everything is done, it will be easier for your family to help with meals, pack lunches and snacks.
It might seem like a frightening task, but organizing your kitchen is important and will benefit your entire family when it’s done! It’s going to change your life.
My recommended plan of attack is to start with your pantry and cupboards on the first day, and then move to the fridge and freezer on another day.
The Supplies You’ll Need for This Project
You’re going to need a few supplies for a kitchen organization project.
I recommend investing in a few of the following items:
- Tupperware Food Storage Containers
- Mason Jars
- Wicker & Plastic Baskets
You will need various sizes of all the above products. They will help you keep dry goods, bulk food purchases, and oddly shaped items organized.
In my own kitchen, I’m a big fan of the Tupperware modular mates collection. These are amazing for storing baking products, rice, grains, snacks, crackers, cereals, and so much more.
Check out this Tupperware custom kitchen planning storage chart.
I like them because they fit beautifully inside cupboards and pantries to create a tidy visual arrangement of all the things you need.
I am a little bit of a Tupperware junkie! I attribute my neat and tidy pantry to my friend Miriam Hawkins, a Tupperware consultant. She’s helped me out many times over the years.
Keep reading to learn how to start your kitchen organization project!
Organizing Your Food Pantry & Cupboards
The first step in your kitchen organization project is to remove everything from your pantry and food cupboards.
You might be surprised by what you find. Anything that’s expired should be discarded or recycled. If there are products that are still good but you don’t plan on using, put them aside to donate to a local food bank.
Take stock of what’s remaining and divide the goods into different zones. I recommend grouping together things like all your kids’ lunchbox snacks, baking needs, grains, and so on. If you found non-food items, find another home for them somewhere else.
Now is a good time to wipe down your empty shelves so you can start fresh.
Survey your clean space and make a mental plan for re-stocking all your products. Popular go-to family items like breakfast cereals and snacks should be at eye level and within arm’s reach. If you have kids, you might want to make some of their snacks accessible at their height level.
Baking needs like flour, sugar, oils, vinegars and spices should all be kept on shelves that are convenient and easy to access while cooking.
Now it’s time to neatly restock your shelves using all those Tupperware containers, mason jars, and baskets we talked about earlier.
Label everything as you go (see section below for my top labelling tips). With canned or boxed items, check the expiry dates and keep the more current dates in the front and the more distant expiry dates at the back.
You should have a good visual picture of what types of cooking and baking supplies you have now. You might notice there are some obvious items missing, so keep a shopping list of items you will need to re-stock.
Keep moving things around until you get it just right for your needs. It can be a bit like a jigsaw puzzle at first, but with enough focus eventually you’ll get all the pieces to fit!
Organizing Your Fridge
With all your dry and canned goods organized, it’s time to turn your attention to the fridge.
Again, you’re going to need to remove everything from the fridge and discard or recycle any expired items. It’s time to get rid of that moldy piece of cheese and wilted lettuce!
When the fridge is empty, thoroughly wipe down all the shelves and walls. Many fridges even have removable shelves and drawers that you can wash in the sink. I guarantee it will look like a brand-new fridge when you’re done!
Now it’s time to create different “zones” for commonly used items again.
Don’t forget you can use those Tupperware containers, mason jars and baskets inside your fridge to keep things organized and loose items grouped together. You can also label those containers so you don’t forget what goes in them!
Now, the hard part is done but keeping your fridge organized is going to be a weekly effort.
The best time to maintain your fridge is just before you make your grocery list and menu plan for the next week. Do a quick check for any expired, stale or wilted items and take the time to wipe up any spills each week.
Organizing Your Freezer
Do you know what’s at the back of your freezer?
There’s no point in buying a bunch of chicken breasts when there’s a great sale on, and then forgetting about them in your freezer for the next 8 months!
Or what about finding an unidentified casserole dish with no label, and the contents completely freezer burned? What a waste of all the time, effort and money you put into making that meal.
Once again, you’re going to remove everything from the freezer. You’ll want to work quickly on this section so things don’t have much of a chance to thaw. Put aside the unidentified or expired items, and then quickly put back all the frozen foods in your freezer.
You should keep a list of the foods you’re putting back in the freezer.
Sort them into different zones for frozen foods, casseroles, meats, vegetables, frozen treats, etc. Your kids shouldn’t have to reach under frozen raw meat to get to their popsicles so keep the more popular items accessible near the front.
Each week when making your menu plan and shopping list, you can check your freezer stock list first. There will likely be things in your freezer that you can use in your weekly plan before they expire.
Labelling Tips & Tricks
I label and date everything in the pantry, fridge, or freezer.
It only takes a couple seconds to create a label for something and makes things much more efficient, reduces waste, and helps everyone in the family find what they’re looking for.
My advice is to label all your items in the fridge, freezer, and pantry (even leftovers in the fridge). It’s a great task for kids who will have fun making labels.
You don’t need a fancy label machine to make labels. Just use a roll of masking tape and a permanent marker to make quick labels. It’s easy to write on, stays put where needed, and is easy to peel off with no residue!
Along with my Tupperware addiction, I am a big fan of labelling tools:
What kinds of things can you label? Product names, expiry dates, and dates products were opened, cooked, or frozen.
For example, if I open a box of crackers even if the expiry date is 12 months away, I’ll add a note on the box with the date I opened them.
That way, if I come across the open box in my pantry a few months later I will know they are stale because once opened, they’ll go stale in about a month or so.
Maintaining Your Organized Kitchen
Congratulations, you’ve achieved kitchen order and are on your way to successful and efficient cooking and baking!
Now it’s time to talk about maintenance. Take just 10 minutes every month to go through your pantry, rearrange items as necessary, and check for expired goods.
Making this consistent effort to keep track of what’s in your pantry will help you make sure your important go-to items are always fresh and well-stocked.
If your child comes home with a last-minute request for you to make cupcakes for school tomorrow, you should be able to whip up a batch without having to run out to the store.
Don’t forget to introduce (and teach) your family the new pantry system. Enlist them to help maintain the pantry (including the fridge) and to keep things tidy.
Keep a shopping list nearby so all your family members can add to it. Whoever takes the last spoonful of peanut butter should add it to the shopping list instead of just leaving an empty jar in the pantry!
So there you have it, the perfect organized pantry with that promised smoother day-to-day life!
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