A friend who has been going through a hard season recently asked if I’d be willing to come clean out and organize her pantry. She knows this is something I love to do, so it didn’t even feel like a sacrifice. It took me less than 2 hours, which isn’t too bad. If she wasn’t already a generally organized person, it probably would have taken longer, but through the mess I could see the system she had before her life got turned upside down. While I was working on this project, I began thinking about how the principles I was using could apply to anyone, no matter the size of the pantry, and also that these principles could apply to any room of your house–bathroom cabinets, linen closets, bookshelves, garage shelves, etc. Here are my tips for how to organize a pantry!

How to Organize a Pantry (or Any Room!)

My friend told me that she was a little embarrassed to have me see your pantry, but after many years of helping friends organize spaces, I told her it was by no means the worst that I’ve seen!

Evaluate your space

The first step is to take a deep breath and evaluate the space you’re trying to organize. Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed. Take a good look and imagine what you would like it to look like. Once you have a bit of a vision of what you’re wanting and what needs to be addressed, you can move on to the next step.

With my friend’s pantry, I immediately knew that one of our goals was going to be to get things off the floor. But the shelves were crowded, so that would mean having less stuff in the pantry overall. Often, the reason an area won’t stay organized is because there is just too much stuff in that space. I wasn’t sure what we could move out of the pantry, but that’s where I planned to start.

Get rid of anything that doesn’t belong

My friend’s husband is a prolific gardener and every summer she makes dozens of jars of refrigerator pickles. She will ask friends for old jars. This year her friends really went all the way and she ended up with probably 50 jars, but she didn’t use them all. These jars have been taking up valuable shelf space in her pantry. We got all the ones that didn’t have lids or that were not big enough for good use and put them in a box to donate.

Getting rid of things might mean truly throwing something away or donating it, or it might mean finding another space in your house for those items. One thing we left in the pantry was a big bin of beach towels. Living in the South, my friend said her kids are always coming in wet from the sprinkler or a friend’s pool or playing in the rain. The pantry is near the garage door, so having that bin of towels there makes it easy for her or her kids to grab one. There is no right or wrong way to organize a space; you do what works for you! We left the towels in the pantry.

This also includes getting rid of expired items. My friend was pretty on top of things, but I did find a bag of cornmeal that had expired in 2025.

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