It’s time to declutter and organise your pantry. Which means saying goodbye to the grime, dust and grease, including the mess and residue from the cooking supplies that have been sitting there for months. This guide will take you through the best cleaning methods and many helpful organisation tips.
Get your gloves, wipes and dusters ready, and let’s go!
Cleaning time: it will depend on how big your pantry is and how dramatically you want to transform it, but on average this should take around 1 to 2 hours.
What you’ll need:
- Lukewarm water and soap.
- Anti-bacterial spray or white vinegar (if you prefer a non-toxic, natural option).
- Glass or wood polish (depending on the surface of your pantry).
- Gloves (if you want to protect your skin).
- Duster cloth.
- Jars and containers (if you don’t want to keep the original packaging).
Method:
Take a before photo of your pantry (trust us on this one, it will be worth it).
Clean out
Remove everything from the shelves. There’ll be no cleaning around that old honey jar today. Everything has to go, so you can properly decide what will stay and what will end up in the bin. This will also ensure the surfaces will be cleaned spotless.
Wash the surfaces
Prepare your wipes and a bucket filled with water and soap. This step will make it easy to remove any dry spots. You can remove any racks or drawers to wash them outside of the cupboard for an effortless wipe down. Dry the surfaces and clean them up with anti-bacterial spray or vinegar.
Decluttering
Next, check the expiry dates on your products and bin the ones that are too old to be safely consumed. You can then place the produce in jars or containers to keep them fresher or wipe them down. We would recommend labelling your storage containers to make sure the whole household knows what is what.
Polish
With a dry cloth wipe the cupboard with glass or wood polish accordingly. Once everything is dry, you can start organising the pantry.
Organise
There are many ways of organising your cupboard and it is completely up to you how you would like it to look. However, keep these tips in mind while making your decision:
- Practicality. It’s going to be beneficial in the long run to keep the products you use frequently in the front of the cupboard. This will save you time.
- From sweet to salty. Feel free to organise your pantry according to flavours of the products.
- Colour coordinated pantry? We dig it! This works especially well if your pantry is on full display, not behind a cupboard door.
- Carbs, fats, protein. This organisation technique is perfect for our fitness junkies. You could place all your kinds of pasta, rice, grains etc. on top, coconut oil, ghee, olive oil in the middle and protein powders, tofu, beans on the bottom.
Now take the after photo. Do you like what you see?
Don’t forget to post the photos on our social media, to show us your pantry transformation!
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