Getting your pantry organized can seem like a daunting task. With all of those shelves and all of the stuff shoved on them, where do you begin? What is the best way to get everything organized and to keep things where they belong?

I always like to begin at the beginning. If your pantry is a complete disaster and you do not know where anything is, the first step of pantry organization for you should be to take everything out of the pantry. Now before you put anything back in, decide what you want to use your pantry for. Do you want to use it to store extras of things? Maybe you have large things that do not fit well in any other cabinet in your kitchen. Do you want to use it to store appliances that you use fairly infrequently?

Once you have decided what you want to use it for, assign sections to your pantry. One section might be the large container section. Another might be for appliances. Another section might be for extras. You may want to even put labels on the sections. This can be especially helpful if there are others in your family. Be sure to give everyone in the family a little orientation of where things go once you have decided where you want everything.

And now comes the trickiest part of pantry organization, keeping everything where it belongs. The labels should help and letting your family know where things go should help. But what if you get a new appliance and it does not fit? What if you overbuy on extras and need more space for those items? If you get a new appliance that does not fit, you may have to rearrange your sections so that you can get it to fit in the right area. If you overbuy on extras, sticking a few boxes in an area that they do not belong for a few weeks is not going to hurt anything.