Six Tips for Reorganizing Your Kitchen Pantry Before the Holidays

Dave Kushner • Nov 10, 2020

The holidays are coming. While this may be the most wonderful time of the year, it’s also one of the most stressful. You’ll be in your kitchen more often than ever, whipping up pies, cooking turkey, and making stuffing. Your kitchen pantry could use an overhaul for the season ahead, but how?

Follow these handy tips for reorganizing your kitchen pantry for the holidays:
Take everything out and give your pantry a deep cleaning
Dispose of expired foods and donate what’s not expired but you don’t use
Organize foods by category
Then sort them by most to least used
Keep your holiday food essentials easily accessible
Make use of wine racks, pantry dividers, and related accessories for staying organized

If you need even more actionable information, then you’ve come to the right place. Keep reading for steps and details on the above six tips so your pantry will be ready for all the holiday hustle and bustle to come!

Deep-Clean Your Pantry

Cleaning your pantry inside and out is a time-consuming process, so it’s probably not something you do all that often. Perhaps you haven’t fully emptied your pantry since you moved into your home, and that was years ago. If so, then this chore is more than overdue.

Remove everything in the pantry, going shelf by shelf and drawer by drawer until it’s all gone. Don’t necessarily spend much time checking the best-by and sell-by dates quite yet; you can do that in a little while.

For now, give your pantry a deep, thorough cleaning, covering every square inch. Get into the habit of cleaning your pantry at least one or two other times a year, such as in the spring as well. This will help you in your quest to keep your pantry organized.

Throw Away Expired Food and Donate What You Don’t Need

Now that your pantry is spotless, it’s time to turn your attention to all of the food you took out. A lot of it probably won’t end up going back in your pantry simply because the expiration dates were quite a long time ago.

Use your discretion about what food you should keep versus what you shouldn’t. As a general rule, all expired food should go, as eating it can cause symptoms like fever, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. That said, there’s a big difference in keeping expired bread versus keeping expired cereal.

As you go through all the boxes, containers, bags, and jars of food, you’ll likely come across some items that aren’t expired, but you’re not sure if you’ll use them. That’s okay! Instead of putting these foods back in your pantry where they’ll expire, untouched in the dark, donate your food instead.

The holiday season is a great time to give to those less fortunate. If you are going to donate food, canned goods are best. Also, make sure that the seals or tabs are unbroken, as opened food probably won’t be accepted.

Organize Food by Category

By the time you’re done flipping over every box and container to check the expiration dates, you should be left with a sizable pile of food that you want to keep. This food is all relatively fresh and things that your family likes to eat.

Dailymom explains that to determine how to best organize this food, you need to categorize it. If you have loose containers of spices floating throughout your pantry and getting pushed further and further back, gather those together.

Maybe your kids opened a box of cereal, and that box has been sitting at the front of your pantry while the unopened cereal boxes have disappeared in the back. In that case, you’d want to keep all of your cereal together. This lets you take stock of what you have so your household never runs out of Cheerios or Lucky Charms when your kids eat it every day for breakfast.

As you create these groups of food, you may be left with a few food items that just don’t go together. If so, you can start a miscellaneous pile. It’s not a bad idea to reassess what’s in this pile and decide whether you’d like to donate it.

Sort Food from Most Used to Least Used

Now it’s time to put everything back in your pantry shelves and drawers. Keeping food within the same categories as you organized them into, place them in your pantry from the most used to least used foods. Make sure the foods you’re putting in the back have the longest expiration dates. Make it a point to get to this food relatively soon so you don’t waste it.

Keep All of Your Holiday Cooking and Baking Essentials Within Reach

You love the holidays, which is why you go all-in on cooking the best turkey on the block with homemade everything. From cranberry sauce to stuffing, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin pie, you make it all.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are balancing acts regarding your time in the kitchen. On Thanksgiving, you want to make sure the bird is done early before half your family splits off to watch the big football game. On Christmas, you want to be there to watch the kids open gifts (and maybe open a few gifts of your own) but not have dinner at 8 o’clock.

You know what can really waste time you already don’t have on days like those? Not having the nutmeg for your pumpkin pie or the instant yeast for the bread rolls. You’d have to tear your whole pantry apart looking for just one thing.

Organizing as explained above should prevent those sort of mishaps, but so will this little hack. Since you know you’ll use a lot of the same food staples over the next few weeks, keep those items in the front of your pantry.

Later, once the new year has rung in, the Christmas tree is on the curb, and the last of the sparkly decorations is down, you can integrate these holiday food staples into the rest of your pantry. For now though, do yourself a favor and keep al of that stuff near the front.

Use Wine Racks, Pantry Dividers, and More for Long-Term Organization

Putting the same foods back into your pantry albeit categorized a different way is not enough to keep your pantry organized. You also need solutions for a cleaner, easier-to-use pantry.

If you’re a big wine collector, the pantry is an ideal spot for wine because it’s dark and room temperature. Yet those bulky wine bottles take up too much valuable room you need for other foods. Consider a pantry wine rack or two for housing your most precious bottles and increasing the space you can use for food.

Pantry dividers let you contain those small, everyday food items that tend to disappear, such as seasoning packets, marinade packets, or instant yeast packets. Dividers are also handy for cans, jars, and round containers you may store sideways. You won’t have to worry about these items rolling away anymore!

A spice rack will ensure all those containers and jars of spices are always within reach of each other. The next time you need the garlic salt, thyme, or oregano, you won’t have to rip apart your pantry for one little jar.

You can also stash odds and ends in sliding baskets that go into your pantry. Metal wire baskets let you see exactly what’s in each basket so you don’t have to waste your time on a pointless guessing game.

Conclusion

‘Tis the season to be busy, especially in the kitchen. With these six handy kitchen pantry reorganization tips, you won’t miss a precious second of holiday time rummaging through your pantry. Everything you need will be front and center so you can grab it and get to cooking.