33 Pantry Storage Hacks That Will Leave You With Maximum Space

The internet has been going crazy in recent years over content creators showing their organized bathrooms, bedrooms, and now kitchens. While watching the videos may not make you jump to clean out your dresser drawers or buy color-coded organizational systems to transform your life into something out of Marie Kondo's playbook, it may give you a fair amount of inspiration for how you can take simple steps to make your life a less cluttered place. 

We're starting our organizational adventure with one of the most disorganized places in any home cook's space: the pantry. While there is a high return on keeping a meticulous space for all of your spices, dry goods, and cooking tools, the act of starting the reorganizing process of your pantry is no small feat. Here are some of the small and relatively inexpensive ways that you can transform your pantry to maximize its utility space. 

Corners can be an annoying part of any pantry because food and tools can easily get lost or pushed out of view. As a result, you can lose a lot of potential space on your shelves. Instead, we recommend installing a turntable to maximize storage in the corners of your pantry. Invest in a turntable with a non-skid surface or a rim to prevent items from flying off when you spin it. 

If you constantly have to ask, "Wait, what is this again?" you may find yourself with a major storage no-no. If you're buying containers to decant your dry goods into or store dinner leftovers, always aim for clear containers. It pays to use clear containers for your pantry storage because it will save you a ton of time on labeling and allow you to grab items from your pantry when you need them quickly. Otherwise, you may find yourself rifling through jars and boxes and disrupting the careful balance of your space. Clear containers also allow you to see how much of an item you have, preventing you from buying too much and overfilling your pantry. 

If you've worked in the restaurant industry, you've probably heard the acronym "FIFO" before. "First in, first out" means to always use the oldest items first before using the newer ones. 

The rotation trick to ensure your food stays fresh starts when you purchase new items. Rather than placing these new items at the forefront of your pantry, put them in the back and pull older food toward the front. To ensure all of your older items get eaten, you can reserve a place in your pantry for "Eat me first" foods like opened bags of chips, cans expiring soon, and the like. It might even give you some ideas for meal planning.

One of the reasons why your pantry is cluttered may be because you are keeping around items that you don't use or use infrequently. Take your holiday cookie cutters, pumpkin-spiced hot chocolate mix, and Valentine's Day sprinkles and store them in a dedicated basket in your kitchen. This will prevent your regular-use items from getting mixed up with others and will streamline your pantry organization process. 

Grocery stores follow this same tactic when organizing their shelves. The most desirable products are always kept at eye level to encourage customers to buy more of them, while the cheaper and fringe brands are usually on the top and bottom. 

Always keep items you use frequently at eye level when organizing your pantry. This will prevent you from pulling everything out to find the flour or pasta you use regularly. It will also help people (read: "spouses") unfamiliar with your pantry design find the items they need. 

If you live with children, you know how hectic snack time can be. Children in a pantry, picking and pushing through your neatly organized stacks of cans and grains to find a single snack-sized bag of Teddy Grahams is not ideal. Instead, you should design your kitchen with the people that use it in mind. For example, place all the kids' snacks in a place that is easy to reach and at their level. Store foods that you don't want your small children eating higher up in the pantry. 

One of the biggest mistakes people make when organizing their pantry is not utilizing the open space between shelves. With the help of a riser, you can easily store your spices and small cans. Risers come in many different shapes and sizes and can also allow you to stack items behind one another and read the labels more easily. You can also purchase an adjustable shelf to make room in small spaces that would otherwise go unused. 

One of the most systematic ways to organize your pantry for maximum space and ease of use is to group related products or ingredients into zones. Create a special section for baking where you can store your flour, sugars, leavening agents, and the like, as well as a space for all of your pasta shapes. When it comes time to collect your items from the pantry, you won't be rushing across the room to try to corral all of the tools and ingredients you need. 

Pegboards are a simple way to give some life to the liminal spaces in your pantry, like walls and doors. You can put up a pegboard from your local hardware store with a few simple tools and hang items that would otherwise be difficult to store, such as mugs, spatulas, and pans. When organizing this part of your pantry, always be sure to properly mount all of the hardware and ensure that you are abiding by the maximum weight on the board. 

One of the reasons why pantries get so cluttered is because items are accumulating that either have little utility in the kitchen or are past their prime. When organizing your pantry, take account of expiration dates — especially on items you decide to decant and place in a separate container. When you get new items like cans and jars, sort them in the pantry based on the expiration date. 

Doors are an under-utilized space within walk-in pantries. You can add a pegboard or hanging bins on the door, but we recommend an even more straightforward hack: a shoe organizer. A clear shoe organizer easily affixes to the back of your door and provides valuable space for storing cans, jars, spices, and packets of food that would otherwise get lost in the confines of your pantry. As with all storage tools, be mindful of the weight restriction on the brackets to avoid an even bigger mess. 

Anyone who has had to carry a blender or bulky food processor across their kitchen knows how tedious large appliances can be. A rolling cart or a plant stand is the secret to your appliance woes. You can store your most commonly used appliances on the shelf and roll the entire thing out to wherever you're cooking. This will reduce the cabinet space that your large appliances take up and allow you to be a bit more mobile when working in your kitchen.

Shower caps are more useful than you'd think. You can use these handy, inexpensive bathroom essentials to cover items in your pantry that you don't often use. That fancy salad bowl that you only use for one summer barbecue a year? Covered. The wide-mouth wine chiller that you got for Christmas but have neglected to use? Check. When you get around to using these items, they will be dust-free and ready to use without needing a wash. 

One of the mistakes many first-time organizers make is to go on social media platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok to try and find organization ideas and tutorials. Not only will you be bombarded by information and tips that are impractical for most amateur organizers, but you'll likely just close the app feeling like you won't be able to accomplish the same level of organization as people with custom-built, professionally designed spaces. Instead, use social media as a way to look for small ideas and hacks that can make a difference in the space that you have. 

You'll need to take a trip to the office supply store for this one. You can purchase magazine holders to help keep boxes upright in your pantry. Secure the holders to the cabinet doors in your pantry and use them as a place to store oddly shaped items like rolls of parchment paper and aluminum foil. While you're at the store, pick up a few file organizer racks to stack your thin boxes of linguini pasta in.

One of the most crucial tips for using small pull-out cabinets or containers without visible front labels is to always label the top of the item. That way, when you need to grab a spice from the cabinet, you can just pick out the one labeled "cinnamon" without having to rifle through several layers of jars. 

Keep the staple ingredient jars — like flour, sugar, and salt — labeled, and use erasable labels for jars with items you don't always have in stock. You can also use your labels to write expiration dates or preparation instructions, such as the ratio of water to quinoa.