Kitchen Organization - Sorting Items in the Pantry

Betsy Fein: Hi! I am Betsy Fein with Clutterbusters. In this series, we are going to be talking about how to organize your kitchen. Today's segment is going to be talking how to organize your pantry and how to sort it and getting started. So the first thing you want to do is take a picture. Its a before and after picture, not necessarily for your friends and family members, but just for you to see how much you have accomplished in your efforts.

So we are going to take a picture. Okay, woo! Looking at it we have got a lot to do. So let's get started. First thing that you want to do is start taking everything out of the pantry and putting it on your counter or a space where you can see everything. So lets start with that first.

Alright, this is the last of it. So we took everything out of the pantry. Can you believe how much is here? I know, its amazing. So the next step we are going to do is decide whether we want to do a liner or not a liner. I have decided to go with a clear liner but there are lot of choices out there and its your way to be creative. Also, I can take advantage of the open pantry and wipe it down. So let's get started and put the liner on and wipe it down.

Okay, great. Now we are done with wiping down the pantry and putting in our new liners. So the next step is we have to weed through everything that was in the pantry. Guess what? Its all not going back. So we are going to have to decide a couple of categories. Whats going to stay? What we are going to donate? What we are going to trash, like expired items? Or what doesn't belong in the pantry?

Let me give you an example. I found this in the pantry which a porch kit. I don't think that should be in the pantry. Another item we found going through is sun block. That's probably not a good place for the sun block. So let's start weeding through and lets get started.

Now that we have weeded through everything and got rid of a lot which is really, really good. Now what we need to do? I will put like things together. As an example, I am going to put all the baking goods together. I am going to put all the paper goods. I am going to put all the snacks together. We are still going to do it here. So let's get started and start putting like things together.

Now what I have done is I have sorted things together, like items together like we talked about. So here it is really easy to find the categories based on everything I had. I have got a pile of drinks, I have a pile of ziplocs and bags, I have a lot of paper goods and kid snacks, lots of different categories. So now what we are going to do is talk about labeling and containers.