Pulling your hair trying to find that lone jar of peanut butter you know you just bought? Been there, done that and know how frustrating it can be to play hide and seek with your pantry goods. And when you finally do find the missing item and pull it from its stack, the rest of the food comes tumbling down like a sad game of Jenga. It’s time you face reality. It’s not going to get better by itself.

At least not without following these steps:

Create a Ranking System

The pantry is a food storage system. We can borrow from the food pyramid to resurrect a proper approach to organization. On the top store your non-essentials or that which you rarely use or have need of. This makes having to climb up high to reach for products something that doesn’t occur on a daily basis.

Below this we put our dry goods in air tight containers. This will keep it fresh and any bugs or creepy crawlies out. They should be at eye level as our dry ingredients are used every day.

Next should be your canned goods and so on and so forth so that the very bottom contains larger portions- such as the food pyramid-until you have executed an arrangement that makes everything on hand at hand in the most appropriate level.

You Door is Ajar

Use an over-the-door plastic pocket shoe rack for packets of soup mixes, seasonings, fruit snacks, granola bars, bendy straws, packs of ramen noodle soup for college reminiscing sake and small bottles that are rarely used and like humpty dumpty just cant stay together. Keep your pantry fresh and odor free and insert an open box of baking soda in on one of these pockets and you’ll find that maximizing every square inch of your pantry will result in a cleaner more efficient space.

Stereotyping Your Space

Be consistent and use the same company for all your storage needs. Whether it’s baskets, glass jars or canisters, by investing in one company you can stack and sort better as all your containers are of similar shape and size. Next prepare custom made labels for your glass storage jars or other storage containers.

Think of all those white powders that can easily be confused during a mad scientist moment of your weekly baking.

Flour, self-rising flour, powdered sugar, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt. Evidently I could expand for some time now. Just take it from someone who has both used the wrong ingredient in haste, or has tasted food that must have encountered some error in judgment between these white powdery pantry necessities.

Keep Your Enemies Closer

Your grocery store isn’t your enemy, despite their price fluctuations and unappealing isle displays and locations. They do employ one technique that you should keep strong when unpacking your purchases. Keep all multiples of products together and leave the ones with the soonest expiration date in the forefront. This will help from having to dispose of food for lack of checking the Best if Used By label. Our biggest enemy is often wasting, yet hopefully this method will help you keep ahead of it.

Think Beyond the Horizon-tal

Rarely does one size fit all. It’s just a fact of life. Therefore neither will one shelf be able to hold any kitchen item. Install appropriate shelving that will best accommodate standard sized groceries. Narrow shelving for cans, high shelves for cereal-even the family size-and vertical shelving for cookie trays are just an example on how proper measurements will save space and expand on storage facilitations.

Dedicated Pantry Tools

While your browsing for the exotic ingredients for a new recipe and this ingredient eludes your capture the best place to make note of its absence would be to record right there in the pantry. Tack a clipboard with list paper and pen right in your pantry so you can always keep ahead of your diminishing stockpile. Other great tools would be a pair of scissors and a funnel. Small things that are kept on hand where used most will not only keep you organized but make life simpler.

Allow shelf space for several identical bins that will hold your onions, garlic, ginger, potatoes and other dry vegetables. Other ways to take advantage of your pantry is to incorporate drawers. These are a lot easier to maintain and can easily hide the mess we are bound to encounter even with all the steps we are procuring towards streamlined pantries.

Never let peanut butter get the best of you again. Take control of your pantry today!