1. Remove everything

2. Check expiration dates (obviously discard anything expired!)

3. Categorize the items (baking, breakfast, sauces, bars, cans, etc.)

4. Contain items
5. Label the containers (they recommended using a Sharpie oil-based paint pen. You can erase it with an alcohol swab and re-label containers at any point).

Below you can see what our pantry looked like before vs. after they organized it!

As you can see, a BIG improvement! Aside from the steps above, here are some other things I learned:

-Take whatever out of it’s box/packaging if possible. For example, you can see that all of our bars were removed from the boxes they originally came in. Another example is taking sparkling water cans out of the box, paper towels out of the plastic etc. This looks better aesthetically but also makes it much easier/faster to just grab something when you need it.

-Avoid having any items on the floor. As you can see we used to keep items like paper towels on the bottom of the floor…well not anymore!

-Use a mix of containers depending on what fits your food/items best. We used these clear lazy Susans for things like sauces, oils, syrups, etc, and then these clear containers for things like cans of soup and beans. We then used the large and small wood grain bins for the rest of our items. These were all from mDesign.

As far as the kitchen goes, Reclaim also added drawer organizers which was definitely a game changer! If possible, I definitely recommend adding these to your space. The cutlery tray and spice tray are both expandable so they can fit various size drawers. These are from mDesign as well. When it comes to the kitchen, they said in general that you want to have as few items on the counter as possible. In our old house we had all of our spatulas, whisks, etc. in a large holder on the counter but they said if you can, you want to store those items in drawers or cabinets.

Here is another look at how they organized some of our other drawers and cabinets. One thing I thought was really smart is they put the coffee beans in a drawer by the coffee maker instead of in the pantry. This way the filters and beans are right there when you’re ready to make coffee each day!

Alright guys, I hope this was helpful! Everything should be linked but let me know if I missed anything 🙂 xxC