New year, new [realistic] organizational system

Every year after taking down our Christmas decor, I have two trains of thought: 1. Wow, this house looks naked. 2. Since it’s already bare, why are the pantry and cupboards/drawers/closets so cluttered?!

Enter: the Home Edit.

I’m sure you’ve seen the show on Netflix. It’s a series about decluttering and using a foolproof organizational system to transform unusable, small spaces, into something functional. So naturally, I went to TOWN in my kitchen.

Beware– this takes a lot of time. That being said, it is totally worth it!

Here are the simple steps to organizing your pantry:

Order a bunch of bins. I recommend choosing a mix of baskets and acrylic bins– the acrylic is super important because it allows you to see everything in your cupboard. Personally, for my pantry I ordered six storage baskets (these are the brown foldable baskets on the bottom and top shelves), eight acrylic storage bins, four acrylic snack bins, two acrylic turntables, two acrylic drink/can bins, and three acrylic stackable wine racks. All items can be found on Amazon linked below.
Pull out EVERYTHING in your pantry.
Give your shelves a good scrub-down to remove stains and crumbs.
Take all of the items now sitting on the floor, and group them into categories. For example: cooking, baking, snacks, treats, breakfast, cans, grains, alcohol, spices, etc.
Throw out anything that’s expired or old and unusable.
Within those categories you just created, remove indvidual snack packets from the big cardboard box it came in. Throw out the big cardboard box, and begin placing the individually packaged items in the clear snack bins (have them all face the same way.)
Place all items in each category into a clear bin accordingly.
Figure out how you want your cupboard to function! For instance, I want easy access to snacks. So I placed all of my snacks right at eye-level in the middle of everything. Then I placed the rest of the bins around it based on category.
Tips: For items you want to hide, like reusable shopping bags, place them in the brown foldable baskets. That way you don’t have to look at them, but they’re easily accessible. Also, smaller items like spices work fabulously on the turntables.
Make sure you like the location of your bins on each shelf, and ta-daaaaa, you’re finished! For me, this sparks instant joy.

My pantry before and after “home-editing.”

This system can be repeated to organize any space in your home! I simply showcased the pantry because it’s the most demanding. I also decluttered and organized my kitchen cupboards and drawers (which was a welcomed change for my junk drawers.)