Steal This Clever Grocery Store Trick For The Best Kitchen Pantry Organization

Getting your kitchen organized — and keeping it that way — can seem like a never-ending task, but it is also one that is more than worth the time it takes to develop a good system. When everything has a place, and you know exactly where that place is, it not only makes the room feel better, but it also vastly improves your culinary efficiency. And while it might not be the first place that you think of going for organizational tips, there are actually a few useful ideas that can be swiped straight from the way products are stocked at your local grocery store. First and foremost on this list is putting your most-used items at eye level in your pantry.

There's a clever little axiom in the retail world that goes, "eye level is buy level." What that means is, essentially, whatever products are placed at eye level in a store will draw the most attention, and thus get the most sales. Manufacturers will actually pay significant fees to secure that prime, eye-level place on the shelf for their products. Now, obviously, the goal of organizing your pantry isn't about getting eyes on particular manufacturers' products, but there is still some utility to planning your organizational scheme around what you want to get at the most. That way, when you open your pantry, the products you most need are right where you want them, right where they are easiest to see.

Another way to look at that prime organizational real estate is as the ideal spot to put the items that need to be sorted through. Spices, for example, are likely one of the items most often grabbed off the pantry shelves, but they also all come in similar-looking jars, with the tiny lettering on their labels being the best way to tell them apart. If you put your spices too high or too low, sorting through them will be such a pain that you might just settle for an under-seasoned dinner. Right at eye-level, though, and it's no trouble at all to dig through and find exactly what you need among the mass of jars. 

Once you've landed on what's going on at eye level, you can continue to draw inspiration from the grocery store by organizing the rest of the food in the pantry by categories like packaging type and overall theme. Themes are things like baking supplies, snacks, condiments — that sort of thing. This style lets you divide the pantry into convenient quadrants. Packaging type, on the other hand, groups like items by what they come contained in, which might mean putting cans on the top shelf and jars on the bottom, for example. Each has its own merits, and they can be used in tandem, as you often see on grocery store aisles, where theme and packaging both often decide where a product ends up. With grocery-inspired pantry storage hacks like these, you should have no trouble keeping everything organized and efficient.