How to Organise a Pantry (Without Buying a Single Container)
If you've been searching for how to organise a pantry, there's a good chance you've scrolled past a lot of photos of perfect jars and matching labels, and come away feeling like that's what your pantry should look like too.
The good news is that your pantry doesn't have to be Insta-worthy to be organised. There's a much simpler way to turn things around if yours has started resembling an upturned shopping trolley (no fancy jars required).
But first, hello and welcome! I'm Dr Bea Bobbin, and I’m a Professional Organiser and Certified Decluttering Coach. My own pantry doesn't have a single '2010s curly wedding font' label in it, but it's still organised. Let me show you how I went about it.
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Do You Need Jars and Labels to Organise a Pantry?
Pantry clutter has a way of creeping up on us. New shopping goes in at the front, older things get pushed to the back, and frightening things start lurking behind the spaghetti without anyone noticing (cue Jaws music)…
So when a pantry starts to feel out of control, our first thought is often that we need to get it ‘organised’. Then we look up how to organise a pantry, and what we're shown is rows of matching containers, with every packet neatly decanted (and not a single stale biscuit in sight).
I can understand the appeal. Looking at a crowded, chaotic space is stressful for our brains, especially for women (for real; there's research on this), and wanting to bring some order to it is a natural response. (I love those pantries too… swoon.)
The trouble is that a Pinterest-style pantry asks a lot of our brains to keep it that way, with jars to refill and a whole new (fiddly) layout to remember. My own pantry looks nothing like this, because I don't have the capacity to maintain that kind of system, and my husband and kiddo don't either.
So I'd rather suggest a more achievable goal: a pantry that looks and functions a whole lot better than it does now. Most of the time, we can get there just by having less in it.
Wondering why the mess keeps coming back, no matter how much you tidy? Read Why Is My House Always Messy? (It's Not Because You're Lazy) to find out what's really going on.
Before You Start: What Is Your Pantry For?
Before you start, it can help to think about the job your pantry is actually supposed to do. Most pantries hold food that keeps for a while, like tins, pasta, rice and cereal, along with things like potatoes and onions. Anything that isn't helping the pantry do that job may not need to live there, but there's no need to make any big decisions about that yet. It's just something to keep in the back of your mind as you go.
Why I Don't Start With Pantry Zones
Zoning is common advice when it comes to how to organise a pantry. You divide your pantry into areas like breakfast, baking, snacks and dinner staples, based on what you need close together when you cook.
The tricky part is that zones ask you to make a decision about every single item, and then remember that decision every time you use that item. Does the peanut butter go in breakfast or with other jars? Are the tinned tomatoes a dinner thing or a tins thing? Sorting things into categories, then recalling the whole layout (while you’re simultaneously trying not to burn your dinner) both draw heavily on our brain’s executive functions.
For people with ADHD (and anyone else who finds this hard), a zoned pantry can be really difficult to keep up. When you’re worn out and just trying to put the blimmin’ groceries away, things end up shoved wherever there’s room. It’s very easy to blame yourself for everything going a bit haywire, when really, that imposed system was asking too much of you to begin with.
What I Recommend Instead of Zoning
Zones are an external system we try to implement. Instead, I use a question from decluttering expert Dana K White: "If I needed this item, where would I look for it first?" Whatever answer pops into your head first is where that item lives.
"Where would I look for it first?" is an instinct-based way of achieving organisation that fits the way your brain already works. If the chicken stock is where you'd naturally look first, you don't have to stop and think when you're halfway through a 17-step recipe and someone is yelling "Mum!" from the next room. You're also far more likely to put it back in the same spot.
Does keeping track of what's in the cupboard feel extra hard for your brain? You might like: Is Clutter a Sign of ADHD? What the Research Says, and Where to Start.
Don't Pull Everything Out
Lots of guides on how to organise a pantry start by suggesting you empty the whole thing onto the kitchen bench. But if the kids need you or dinner starts to burn, that pile could end up sitting on the kitchen bench for a week.
Instead, I’d suggest leaving everything where it is and working one item at a time. This means you can stop whenever you need to, with no giant disaster to come back to if you get interrupted in the middle.
So let’s walk through the Five-Step No Mess Decluttering Method in a pantry, so you can get an idea of how it feels when I’m doing this with my clients.
Grab yourself a bag for rubbish, and an old box or bag for donations, and read on!
Step 1: Rubbish (and What to Do With Expired Food)
Start by taking out anything that's obviously rubbish, like empty boxes or mouldy bread. (If you have to stop and wonder whether something is rubbish, then it isn't. Leave it for now.)
Expired food is where some of us start to spiral. My own rule of thumb is that if something is past its expiry date, there's a chance it might not be safe to eat, so I let it go. But that's totally your call!
Step 2: Easy Stuff
‘Easy Stuff’ is anything that already has a home somewhere else in the house but has wandered into the pantry. At our place, a certain small person likes to hide special treasures (like the latest Lego creations) behind the olive oil tin.
If you find something that actually belongs elsewhere, take it to its home straight away rather than starting a pile on the kitchen bench, then come back and keep going.
Step 3: Obvious Donations
An Obvious Donation is anything that makes you think, “Why do I even still have this?” If you find yourself weighing it up, leave it for now.
When you’re working out how to organise a pantry, this tends to be in-date food you’re never going to eat, like chickpeas you bought before remembering you don’t like chickpeas. Pop it straight into your donations box, then drop it at a food bank, or text the neighbours to see if anyone would like it.
Got a bag of donations ready to go? Read Where to Donate in Canberra for local spots that will take them off your hands.
Step 4: Ask the Two Decluttering Questions
With the Rubbish, Easy Stuff and Obvious Donations out of the way, you can work through what's left one item at a time. Pick up an item and ask yourself, "If I needed this item, where would I look for it first?" Then put it there right now.
Sometimes you won't know. Say you pick up a tin of lentils and have no idea where you'd look. That's when you ask the second question: "If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already had one?"
If the answer is yes, picture yourself hunting for those lentils, and put them wherever you'd first start that search. If the answer is no, it's probably fine to let that tin go, because you'd most likely just buy more without remembering you had some.
A pantry is usually a shared space, and everyone who uses it needs to be able to find things and put them back.
The question: "If you needed this item, where would you look for it first?" can help with this, too!
Take rice crackers for example (usually a hot commodity in our household). If we ask “If you needed rice crackers, where would you look for it first"?”, and most of the people who do the rice cracker snack prep would look in the same spot, that's a good sign it's where the rice crackers should live.
This method gives everyone a much better chance of finding things, and of putting them back somewhere the next person will find them too.
Step 5: Keep What Fits (the Container Concept)
Your pantry is the size it is, and sadly it can’t stretch like Mary Poppins’ carpet bag to hold more and more. Whether it’s a walk-in or one small cupboard, that’s the limit of what you can keep in it, and that’s okay. Things tend to get stressful when we try to fit in more than the space can hold, and there’s already enough going on in a kitchen.
So now you can start putting like things together, in the spot where you’d look for them first. This is the heart of how to organise a pantry in a way that actually lasts. Say you find four tins of tomatoes, but the spot where you’d look for tomatoes only has room for three.
You could choose one to let go, maybe the one with the shortest expiry date, or however you’d like to decide. You might text the neighbours about it, or compost the tomatoes and recycle the tin.
Either is a perfectly reasonable choice. Three is simply how many tins of tomatoes that space can hold.
You're Done! (And the One Product Worth Buying)
Once you've worked through those five steps, there's no Rubbish, Easy Stuff or Obvious Donations left in there. Your pantry is decluttered, and in most cases it's organised too, with no matching jars, label maker or Cricut required.
Our pantry at home is full of bog-standard supermarket packets with no labels. Everything is where we'd look for it first, with enough space to get things out without causing an avalanche. That's a completely fine, valid, functional, organised pantry.
If there's one thing I'd consider buying, it's a set of shelf steps (the cheap tiered risers from big box stores). On deep shelves, they lift the back row up so you can see what's there.
If you'd like to go for a glow-up beyond that, have at it! For most of my clients, though, it ends up being a lot of work to maintain, so it's worth knowing that the matchy-matchy jars are completely optional.
Ready for Help With Your Pantry?
If you’d like some support with how to organise a pantry (or the rest of your home), there are two ways we can work together:
Local to Canberra? My Canberra decluttering services offer one-on-one help in your home.
Prefer to work from wherever you are? My online decluttering services bring support to you, anywhere in the world.
Not sure which one fits? Book a free one-hour consultation. There's no pressure and no judgment, and we'll get started on your space together.
Want more simple, kind tips like these? Join the Hello Space newsletter, and I'll send brain-friendly decluttering ideas straight to your inbox.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Start by decluttering, and leave everything where it is while you work so you're never left with a big mess on the bench. Once the rubbish, easy stuff and obvious donations are out, ask "If I needed this, where would I look for it first?" for each item, and keep only what fits comfortably in the space. Most of the time, that's all a pantry needs.
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There isn't one official list, and it changes depending on who you ask. Common zones include breakfast, baking, snacks, pasta and grains, tins, spreads and sauces, and a spot for spare stock.
That said, I don't recommend starting with zones, because deciding which zone every item belongs in (and remembering it) takes a lot of brainpower. Asking "Where would I look for this first?" gets you an organised pantry that suits how your brain already works.
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I'm not a huge fan of the word "mistakes", because most of these come from doing exactly what the internet suggests.
Keeping that in mind, the traps I see most often are buying containers before decluttering, pulling everything out at once, and packing shelves so full that nothing can come out without an avalanche. Setting up a system that's lovely to look at but hard for the whole household to keep up is another common one.
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The best layout is the one where everything sits where you (and the other people who use it) would look for it first. Leave enough room on each shelf to get things in and out easily. If your shelves are deep, a set of shelf steps can lift the back row up so you can see what's there.
