Organize your pantry with a five-step makeover

We confront it everyday, morning and night, for one of our most basic needs — the search for food. ¶ If your pantry is a mess, it can bookend your day in frustration. ¶ Fortunately, it's also one of the quickest organization projects that offers one of the biggest returns in improved efficiency and peace of mind. We turned to two professional organizers to make over two different types of kitchen pantries. ¶ The first one, a floor-to-ceiling cabinet with six pullout shelves, was my own challenge. The second, a closet pantry combined with a mudroom, was a neighbor's. ¶ It took about an hour to complete the cabinet pantry, and it took two organizers about two hours to make over the larger one. Each one, however, followed the same basic steps:

Take note of what works about your pantry. Then, list the things that make you crazy about it.

Lisa Bianco, director of marketing for the National Association of Professional Organizers St. Louis chapter and owner of Perfectly Organized in O'Fallon, Mo., says she starts every project with a conversation with the client about how often the items in the pantry are used and by whom.

The stuff that gets used every day needs to stay near the middle. The things that children help themselves to should be within their reach. The less often an item is used, the higher or lower up it can be stored.

Gretchen Bender, owner of Creative Spaces Organizing in St. Louis, says the first question she asks is: What is your goal?

"A lot of time people have the space, but they don't know what to do with it. They just see a series of shelves."

The organizer starts envisioning what can be grouped together, taken out and added to improve the functionality.

"If you don't see it, you won't use it," Bianco said. We discovered several unopened bottles of vitamins and supplements that had been purchased with good intentions but lost in the recesses of the pantry.

The next step is to group like items. Bianco brought a few storage containers in which she grouped all the protein bars, and fruit and nut bars. She created a section for snacks, one for breakfast items, pasta and dinner, spices, grains/rice and an entire shelf for baking.

First, you purge, Bianco said. Get rid of things that are stale or expired.

We also tossed any Tupperware that was missing lids, and consolidated things into empty jars.

Taking note of the redundancy in the pantry can help cut down future costs. "It can be a money saver," Bender said. Think about the money wasted on food that gets thrown away, excess items and impulse buys. It can help with menu planning to keep a grocery list on the inside door of the pantry and make a note of things you need before you shop for the week's meals.

Bianco moved the largest box of cereal to a middle shelf where our children could reach it more easily. She grouped it with the oatmeal and other breakfast foods. She also suggested tearing the loose tops off of boxes to make the overall space appear cleaner.

For shelves that don't pull out, it's important to use the vertical space, so everything is within eye level. This may require buying a few tiered shelves, she said. She added two small containers, two medium ones and two Lazy Susans, all from Target, which cost about $35 in total.

In the closet pantry, they added a few more storage containers for a total cost of about $45.

In both cases, they played with a few different ways of putting the contents back together.

"It's like putting together a puzzle," Bianco said. Some pieces fit better in different configurations, and it takes a little bit of trial and error.