How to Organize Your Food, Pantry, & Cupboards

Welcome to our 35 Days to an Organized Home Challenge blog post series! You can also download our Kindle eBook 25 Days to an Organized Home! Food preparation is one huge way to save money by cooking at home. However, it’s very difficult to cook at home when you don’t have adequate food preparation systems. This means created a weekly menu, grocery shopping, and planning/prepping meals.  We offer a FREE Weekly Menu Plan on our website http://www.debtfreespending.com/category/free-menus/.

Today you’re going to start implementing a food preparation system. We will start small, and you may want to divide this chapter’s tasks out over a few days.  The first step will be organizing your kitchen pantry and cupboards. This means you will take inventory of the foods you already have at home, and organizing them into like categories and location.

Obviously, this will be all of your dry goods. I’m going to let it up to each reader to decide how organized they want to become in this area, because this will greatly depend on the amount of space you have in your home.  Organizing cupboards and pantries is not a “one size fits all” task.  However, there are basic guiding principles we’re going to give you to help you save time and money in the kitchen

If possible, purchase any organizational products you will need for this project ahead of time. However, sometimes you don’t know what you need until you are in the middle of a project! If you are purchasing products ahead of time, make sure you MEASURE FIRST! For example, you need to know how large your small corner cabinet is before you can purchase a Lazy Susan.

In terms of managing your menu, whether you go with our FREE printable listed above, or if you decide on creating your own menu each week, make sure you are cooking from your stockpile, and make sure that you are buying items on sale that can be used in your meals. The idea is to buy when the price is low and cook from your stockpile of inexpensive foods. Also, remember that the front page of the grocery flyer is where stores lose a lot of money, and you can stock up on food at great prices!  Make sure you keep a price book too (we have a blog post about that HERE) so you know the best prices for food (and other items too!)! Also, LEARN HOW TO START YOUR OWN STOCKPILE!

Action Steps:

1. Take everything out of your kitchen cabinets and pantries (One by one, not all at the same time).
2. Throw away expired foods and foods that you know you do not like/will not use. Now is also the time to get rid of junk food!
3. Dust/clean the shelves.
4. Sort all of the foods by groups (i.e. grains, canned goods, cereals, etc.). While most people do naturally keep these items together, space will often dictate how we organize our foods.
5. Keep items you use the most closest to the cooking areas.
6. If possible, purchase any organizational products you will need for this project ahead of time, but now is the time to start implementing those products. This could include a Lazy Susan, Can Organizers, etc.
7. As you place items back into cupboards, make sure to combine like items, and this is the time to change storage containers if you want to switch to all plastic with labels. However, we realize that many families are limited by their budget.
8. Once you have reorganized, make a list of items you will need to purchase to replenish your supplies. Are you low on sugar, flour, etc.? This will also help you as you meal plan to know what items you have and what items you need.