104. 5 Reasons Why Your Pantry Isn't Organized

Sometimes it's difficult to look at a space and actually see the problem. I've worked with many families over the years who try and try to get/keep a pantry organized, but ultimately, they feel like they can't "do it right." So in today's episode, we're going to cover five possible reasons why your pantry isn't organized, as well as talk about what you can do to [finally] fix the problem. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Many people want to organize their own pantry because they either don't want to pay someone else to do it, they don't have the time, they don't want to think about trying to call someone, do a consultation, have someone there the entire day in their space. Sometimes people are embarrassed and they're like, I don't want to be judged. I've heard it all over the years. And so some people just want tips and they just want direction. So that is my focus today. If you are planning to organize your pantry yourself, I am going to give you five reasons why your pantry isn't already organized. And so once you know those five reasons, it's going to be easier to look at it from a standpoint of, okay, now I see it. I know what the problem is, and now I know how to fix it. Okay. So let's just get right into it. Number five, you won't throw out expired foods and or seasonings. This is one of the big ones, and people think it's not that big of a deal. They're like, yeah, I probably have something expired in my pantry. Or, okay, yeah, out of the 20 soup cans that I have, maybe one or two expired earlier this year. It's still good. It's probably still good. But the problem is until you actually get in there and look around and start pulling things to the front and flipping the items over and checking the expiration dates, a lot of people don't realize that 30%, 40% of their pantry is actually expired. And I think deep down some people know that they have a lot of expired items because even though their pantry is completely full, they keep going out and buying new items. So I know that there are some people out there that say once I actually go in there and check, I'm probably gonna have a lot of expired items, but I don't want to deal with that. So I am going to make this item. I've got the recipe. I'm gonna go ahead and just go buy all new brand new items, and that way I can focus on the project of making the dish instead of actually figuring out what my pantry looks like beyond just opening the doors and grabbing stuff at the front. Okay. Now I'm gonna look at this from two perspectives. Okay. Let's say you are gonna organize your pantry all by yourself. Let's say you also know that you struggle with completing projects once you start. Let's say you have ADHD. Maybe you only have a half an hour or an hour to work on this. You're like, I want to get started, but I don't have a lot of time right now. And I know that my focus won't be there the entire day or even a few hours to do it properly. You're gonna fall into the category of working on a single shelf. Okay. Now, some people are just intimidated. So even if they say, Well, I've got all day to work on this, but I'm just afraid I'm gonna do something wrong, or I'm afraid that I'm not gonna be able to make a lot of decisions before it's time to make lunch or make dinner. Anyone who says yes to any of those traits, just go ahead and plan on working on one shelf today or one drawer. Some people keep their pantry items in a drawer because maybe they don't have a lot of shelf space. So just automatically decide to take one section of the pantry and you're gonna work on it. If you're someone that does have the entire day and you say, I want to do this right, I want to do it like a professional would do it. My husband's here, my friend is here, my kids are gonna help. We're gonna make it a family day, we're just gonna knock out a bunch of stuff in the kitchen, then I would say yes, commit to the whole entire pantry, even if it's a walk-in pantry, because you can delegate, you can climb up on a step stool and you can grab stuff and you can say, Hey, can you go put that on the counter? Everything I'm handing to you, can you put in the trash? You literally can be the project manager and you can have people help you. You can recruit people to do things down below, so to speak, especially if you're up on a ladder and you're working on the top shelf of something, you can save time by not going up and down. So when it comes to the expired foods, the best way to do this, and this is what a professional is going to do, they're gonna pull everything out. Okay, so if you're just working on one shelf, if you're committing to that, look at it as I'm gonna take every single thing off of this shelf, whether it's in the front, whether it's in the back. If you already have organizers on that shelf, take them out too. Everything on the shelf comes out, okay, because you're also going to clean the shelf. Whether you spray the shelf and you wipe it down with a damp paper towel, or you've got the wired metal shelving, you can still take your damp paper towel and wipe those off. Chances are you have some kind of food that has spilled or sauce, or you just have really dirty buildup if you've never wiped off your shelves. So, like I said before, goal number one is to pull everything out and you're gonna look for your expired foods. You're gonna check every single thing. Anything that is expired, you're gonna throw away. Now, it is May 2026. If you have a box item that expired in April 2026, I will let you keep it if you leave it out and you use it today or tomorrow. Those are the rules. You already know it's expired. Most pantry items last for about two years, maybe even longer. Some things last longer. So if your item, your pantry item is expired, it's already been in there a really long time. But I will let you keep it if you use it right away. Okay. Some people struggle with this because they equate throwing away these expired items with throwing away money. And whether or not that's true or not, the fact is still there that you spent the money, you bought an item, you either have to eat it or you have to throw it away. And if it's expired and you don't want to eat it, then you have to accept the fact that you made a mistake. Again, I'm not a mental health professional. So some people are going to be like, well, how do I get through that? Because it is a mental hump. And I see it from many, many people. Trust me, most people that don't throw out expired foods all feel the same way. They feel that pit in their stomach of, I just wasted money. I totally get it. What is behind that? I cannot tell you, but I know that a lot of people have it. I know that I've had it before when it comes to maybe buying lettuce, maybe buying produce that I was really excited to cut into. And I went four or five days and forgot about it, and now it's already molded or it has bruises on it. You know, that's a tough pill to swallow because you think, well, I still want to eat it, so now I've got to go buy another one, you know, and you go through that cycle. I get it. But today is about getting to a better place. And so all I ask is that you get over this hump one time. I'm not saying it won't happen again in the future, but I want you to remember this moment. And if you're throwing away four, five, six cans, four, five, six boxes of something, just know you now have the mental note that you are not gonna let it happen again. Okay. And if you go out and replace those items today or tomorrow, you're gonna probably have them for another couple of years. And so now you're gonna remember if I'm actually gonna go buy this item, I have to use it in the next couple of years, or I've got to let it go. I've got to throw it away. Okay, so that's number five. Number four, you don't have systems in place. Think about how many times you come home and you unpack the groceries and you literally just start taking stuff and putting it on a shelf and then pushing it backwards to the back part of the shelf so that you can just squeeze more in. You're literally just unpacking. You're not organizing, you're not separating, you're not even paying attention, you're just shoving everything onto a shelf. The people who don't have any kind of systems in place, and when I say systems, I don't mean you have to have a custom pantry. I don't mean you even have to have very specific organizers. You don't have any kind of separation, you don't have any kind of shelf divider, you don't have a basket, you don't have a box, you don't have an acrylic bin, you don't have a plastic container, you don't have anything, you just have a shelf. That is part of your problem. That's a huge part of your problem. Because when all of these items are allowed to float, they are going to, they're either gonna get pushed to the back, pushed to the side, mixed in with other stuff. If you don't have that separation, you're not gonna be able to see clearly what you have. And if you can't see clearly what you have, you're gonna go out and buy it because you think you don't have it. Then when you do find it later, it may be clumped in with other stuff and then you realize it's expired. Okay. So once you do get all the expired foods out and you've wiped down your shelf and you're getting ready to put stuff back on, I want you to pay attention to do I have any kind of system? And if you're looking at a blank shelf and you don't have any kind of items that I discussed before, then that needs to be your focus. You need to go get at least one or two bins or one or two dividers. And this is where people get tripped up because they're like, well, I'm not sure what to get. Don't worry about it looking perfect. If you have nothing, the goal is to go from nothing to something. And that's where you can go to a dollar store and get five plastic bins for five dollars, or you can get on Amazon and you can order a couple of acrylic bins for ten dollars. Whatever you find, the goal is to get something, and you don't want to spend a lot of money because this may just be your temporary solution. So that's where people get tripped up too. They're like, I don't want to spend a lot of money when I don't know what I want. I agree with that. Don't do it. Go buy something cheap that's supposed to be temporary. If it ends up working long term, that's great. If it doesn't, you can always gift it later, you can donate it later, you can put it in another area of your house. That's what organizers do all the time. We try to get neutral bins and baskets and shelf dividers to where if it doesn't work in one area, or if you move, because again, we're going through our moving series right now, and these are things that we're talking about. If at some point you move, you can take it with you because you don't know if you're gonna have the same setup. Chances are you're not gonna have the exact same setup. So you want that to be able to transfer. So by this point, you've either cleared off one shelf, or you and your family or your friends, or you and your mental toughness that's gonna take this on all by yourself, have completely taken everything out. You've taken it off the one shelf that you're working on, or you've taken it completely out of the pantry and you've thrown away the expired foods, you've wiped off the shelves, and before you start putting things back, you recognize you have to get something. Now, hopefully, you already have something. Hopefully, you knew going into this. I want to try these new organizers I just bought, or I should probably get some things, and this is where people find inspiration all over the place. They'll look on Instagram, Pinterest, they'll see what a friend has and say, Oh, where did you get those? They'll get on Amazon, and a lot of times these products they'll have a picture of how the seller thinks that you should use them. There are so many places now to get inspiration, and the worst thing that happens is you say, Okay, I'm gonna try that, and you get it home and you hate it and you return it, and you return it right away. You don't let it sit, you don't let that receipt expire, you do it within a few days or at least the 30 days for most items. Number three, you don't have household expectations communicated. Let's say you do have organizers for snacks, and as you're putting things back on your shelf or putting things back in the pantry, you don't have a clear communication to everyone who lives with you how things are supposed to be, how things are supposed to look. If you have a bin with kids' snacks in them and they're allowed to come up and just grab out of the container, you either need to have the container labeled with the person's name on it. So if you have one child who's younger and there are items that they're not supposed to eat, not necessarily because they have allergies, just because maybe they're not old enough. Maybe you have a two-year-old that you don't want eating certain snacks that your six-year-old eats, then you put that container on the bottom shelf so that the smallest child can go grab the snack if you want them to do that. Or you put a label with their name on it. If they are old enough to recognize their name, this is something early on you can teach as far as teaching kids organizing. This is your name, this is your bucket. You can have one, you can go in and get it. And sometimes the way that you can regulate how much they have because they can't even open the container or open up the snack bag. So if you're like, well, I want them to be able to go in and grab their own snack, but I don't want them to eat too much of it, nine times out of ten, they're not going to be able to even open the package by themselves and they're gonna bring it to you. But that does teach them how to go get their own snack, be independent, whether they're two, three, four years old. So that's that's really good. The problem is when they go in and they grab their item, but then they make a mess of the rest of the space. Or maybe you have items that you have organized in your section of the pantry, and maybe your spouse comes in and messes things up. Maybe they're putting away the groceries and they put all of the boxed items where you normally put your supplements. So without being a jerk about it, you can say, Listen, everybody, I'm organizing the pantry. This is how it's going to look. And I don't expect everything to be perfect. But if you grab a bag of chips, when you're done, you put the chip clip on it and you put it back in this bin. This bin is labeled chips. Okay, so this is the expectation. If you've got a little one that's going in for snacks, hey, this is your bin, it has your name on it. These are the snacks that you can grab if mommy or daddy isn't around. The same goes for bigger items. Like if you've got a big case of bottled waters, some people just kind of throw them on the floor of their pantry. Some people actually take them and stock them in other areas. If you're somebody that pulls out your bottled waters and puts them in a basket, and then the next time you walk in, somebody has thrown a bunch of canned items in there, like, you know, Cokes or lemonades, instead of just being frustrated about it and mumbling under your breath, hold a family meeting and say, listen, we are gonna have an organized pantry. This is gonna make it easier for everyone. And so when we come home and we put up groceries, all of us are gonna know where everything is supposed to go. But the person who is going to take charge, which is usually a parent, has to actually implement some rules. And this is where when I go in and help families, there are a lot of parents who say, Well, how am I supposed to expect my nine or 10-year-old to do this? Or how am I supposed to expect my husband who works all the time to come home and do this? There's nothing wrong with setting expectations or putting rules in place for different areas of your home. Because what's gonna happen is you're gonna get frustrated. You're gonna call me out, and you wanna play good cop, bad cop, where I play the bad cop and I pretty much do this for you, but then you're paying a lot of money for me to do it. Some people think, okay, the organizer's gonna come and they're gonna be able to just tell us something different, and then everyone's gonna do it. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say a lot of the things that you could be saying to your own family. And especially if this is supposed to be a DIY project to save money, then I want you to understand what will happen if you call someone to come out. So you can do it yourself. You can tell your family, this is how things are gonna go, this is out of place, or you gotta stop doing this, or quit putting back the cereal box empty. And instead of being nice about it over and over and over again, you treat it as though it's part of a chore. You treat it as though it's part of a reward system. You say, hey, if you want to go to that party on Saturday, you got to pick up all of your clothes from your room, put them in the hamper. You've got to come in here and organize your bucket in the pantry. If you keep putting back empty cereal boxes, I'm not gonna let you do that activity. I'm not gonna let you go to the movies. And so these are things that you don't have to be aggressive about it, but you do have to communicate if that's the kind of household that you want to have. If you want to have an organized anything, you have to make those expectations clear. Okay, the last two things are gonna go by pretty quick. Number two, you can't see everything. You don't have an organized pantry because you can't see everything. Now, as you're going to get organizers, one thing that I want you to understand is that items like a lazy Susan or little drawers that you can actually place on the shelves that pull out where you can actually see into the drawer, you can see everything that's in the drawer, or the lazy Susan that spins around so that nothing is truly ever stuck in the back. These are things that are gonna help you if you are someone that tends to find random items in the back. If you're someone that's like, I don't know what I have. If you don't know what you have, you probably can't see everything. This is where acrylic bends would be good for you. This is where a lazy Susan would be good for you. This is where putting things down lower are good for you. Some people will put food up high that maybe they're not gonna use that often, but then they can't keep inventory on those items. So I understand putting things up high that you're not gonna use that often, but then you also have to commit to climbing up there every so often and figuring out what do I have up here? Or you have to label the front of the shelf. Okay, so bakery items, holiday items, holiday food, maybe cookie tins, you know, there are different things that will sit up there forever because you never go back up there. So I encourage people to maybe put food gadgets up there because if you go to use that gadget, if there's something that requires it, you're gonna say, Oh, I know I still have that. It's probably on the top shelf. And then you climb up and get it. But food is different. Food will expire. And sometimes people will go to make a recipe and they're like, Well, all of my stuff is up there. I'm not really sure what's up there. I don't know if I have sprinkles anymore. I don't know if I have little containers of icing. And they just kind of say, Well, the next time I'm at the store, I'm just gonna go ahead and grab it because I don't know if I have that. And so instead of just saying, I don't know, try to commit to not only taking the inventory, but when you set things back up, when you actually put those items back in, tell yourself, I'm not gonna let this get pushed to the back. I'm gonna try to find a way where I can see it. And if you have drawers, if you have a bin that you can pull forward, even if it's not a drawer, if you can take a bin and lift it up and bring it out and put it on your kitchen island, you can at least go through that bin and see everything that you have. So the problem is that if you are stacking things or you're placing things to where you have a front and a back. So let's say you've got a bunch of soups and you're just fronting and facing them, meaning you're just taking one and putting it at the back and then placing them in front of each other to the front of the shelf, that's fine. If you know that every single soup on that row is brand new, it's all the same flavor, and you're like, okay, I just bought all of these. If I buy any more, I've got to pull the ones from the back forward and then restock in the back. Okay. So if you're someone that knows that you're gonna go through all of those cans pretty quickly. That's totally fine if that's how you want to do it. Otherwise, I would try to get some kind of soup holder where they all roll forward, and you can put the new ones in the back, and then the other ones, the older ones, roll forward, or you've got a lazy Susan, or you've got a basket or a bin, and you can actually see into it. Even if it's just a cheap plastic bin, you can actually see into it and you can see what you have. And the number one thing, number one reason why your pantry isn't organized, you buy too much. We've talked about this in other episodes. We've talked about this already in this episode. Part of the problem is you're not actually being realistic when you're getting groceries. If you're by yourself, if there's just two of you in the household, even if you have a large family, a lot of you will keep buying the same things over and over and over again. And you'll buy them in bulk because of a sale, or because you're just used to getting a lot all at once. But maybe it's something that you don't eat that often. You just think, okay, this is convenient, or my child likes this. Well, guess what? There's a lot of kids that change their mind on the daily. Okay. Especially if you have a younger child, if you have a three, four, five-year-old and you're buying a ton of baby food in a flavor that they like. One day they may just get sick of it and do that whole thing with their mouth and say, nope, not eating that anymore. And then you still have six, seven, eight jars of a baby food that they won't touch anymore. Or maybe you did get a two for three on a bag of chips or some kind of snack or some kind of meat. And then you get at home and you try the first one and you're like, I don't really like this. Now you're stuck with another one. Now I know some of you are trying to save time and trying to save gas, and you're trying to save money by ordering more, picking up once, maybe not driving that often to the store. Maybe you've got a free day where you're like, okay, I've got this time while my child's in school. I can go get a bunch of groceries, and then the rest of the week is gonna be crazy. I understand people are trying to save time unless you live really far out from a grocery store, or unless you know that you're about to have a surgery, or maybe you're gonna go out of town and you're like, we really can't make that many trips to the store because we need to be here. Or, you know, I'm gonna come home from the hospital and I want to make sure that for the next two weeks I have enough to eat because I'm not gonna be able to drive, or maybe you're bringing a new baby home. So you're trying to prepare for everything. I understand trying to be prepared, but some people really go overboard. Hence, why a lot of people become food hoarders. A lot of people will have food in their pantries for years and they have no intention of eating it anytime soon. It's just there in just in case, right? So I understand this isn't an episode about judging or telling you to completely change your habits. It's an episode of if one, two, three, even all five of these things you can relate to, then I want you to actually look at each step. I want you to look at each item that I'm talking about and say, okay, maybe that's why we're not staying organized. I know that when I come home, I put up groceries a certain way. But when my husband does it, I just say, you know what? I'm not gonna tell him what to do. As a household, you guys can decide what kind of house you're gonna live in, right? How you're gonna be organized. And you've got to get everybody on board because the adults may keep it organized, but then the kids come in and mess it up. And that's a talk that you need to have with your kids because you're the one that's gonna teach them how to be organized. And this is why when I go out and work with kids, it's a struggle for them because the parents have never told them this is what you need to do. And so they're like, well, yeah, I'm just gonna throw some stuff on a shelf like my parents do. This is where you can set a good example while they're young and impressionable and say, this is how our household is gonna run. If I ask you to put something up, I expect you to put it in the right place. And if you don't know what the right place is, come and ask me. And if I don't know what the right place is, guess what? We can figure it out together. And so I hope that you take this list and you really look through it. And as you're putting things back up on the shelf, putting things back up today, if you've decided to take on the whole project, just know it doesn't have to be perfect. You just want to throw out your expired foods. You need to make sure you have some kind of system. If you have zero bins, your goal is to have two, three, four by the time you put everything back. You want to make sure as you're putting everything back, it makes sense. All of the kids' stuff lower if you want them to reach it. If it's stuff you don't want them to reach, then it goes higher. You want to be able to see everything. So you're not just pushing stuff to the back, you're putting them in acrylic bins. You want to spread them out. You don't want to put a bunch of stuff clumped together where something gets lost. You want to put the shorter stuff up front, taller stuff in the back, older stuff up front, newer stuff in the back, if you've got multiples of something. And then over the next, I'd say probably week or two or even month, really commit to buying less. If you're somebody that has switched to buying more produce, fresh items, things that go into the refrigerator. Now that you know you have enough of everything you need in the pantry, just if you need it, try not to purchase pantry items for a while. If you're all stocked up and you feel like, okay, we're not eating soup as much as we used to. We're making more meals that are fresh, we're eating more fresh meats instead of canned meats, whatever it is, then hold off on buying the pantry items, even if it's a routine, even if it's something that's part of your weekly list that you make. Just hold off for a while. And most of you live close enough to a grocery store or you pass a grocery store often enough, or if you need something, you can go get it, or you can have it delivered, or you can order it for curbside pickup. So it's not as inconvenient for the majority of you as it used to be, where you had to drive miles and miles to a store. You can have something delivered on Amazon even. So sometimes it just takes a little while for your mind to adjust to the changing times, especially post-COVID. A lot of people are still in that survival hoarding mentality. And we've talked about that in the hoarding series. So if you haven't listened to COVID hoarding, I actually suggest you go back and listen to that because I talk about a lot of this as far as trying to stay stocked up and trying to go into survival mode and make sure that you have enough. I'm not coming down on you because I don't think you should have enough. I just think that sometimes people really, really get obsessed with how much can I have? And they don't pay attention to, I need to actually use what I have. I need to be able to see what I have. I need to be able to use what I have. And so if some of you are standing there right now and all of your stuff is out on the counter and all of your shelves are empty and you've wiped them down and you're like, well, I don't have any organizers, but I'm not gonna be able to go get any in the next two hours. This is the final thing that you're gonna do for today. You're gonna put everything back on the shelves, but you're going to spread everything out into sections as though when you get the bins, you're gonna slide those into where they are. So for instance, instead of putting cans right next to boxes, you're gonna leave a whole, I would say, hand space. So if you if you put your hand out and you turn it sideways, right? The length of your hand, leave a hand space in between the sections. So you've got all your soups together, all your boxes of pasta, all of your seasonings, spread them out to where they're actually grouped into sections, because then you can come along and add the organizers later. But you want to do it within a couple of days of this project because before long, things are just gonna start getting shifted around and they're going to bleed over into the other category. So this is just a visual so you can get everything back into your pantry. You can use your counter space, your kitchen island. But this is a way where you can visually see, okay, I don't have as many soups as what I thought I had. So I guess I don't need a big acrylic bin for them. Maybe I just need to have a small, narrow pantry bin. And this is what a professional organizer will do. They'll come in usually at the consultation. I try to do this at the consultation. I will take pictures of every shelf on a pantry. And when I get home and I'm trying to figure out what organizers to buy, I will try to see everything that they have. And while I'm there, sometimes I'm like, hey, can I move some stuff around just to see what you have? And I may notice that even if they have one bin that says soup, they may only have like two cans of soup. So I'll say, Do you plan on buying more soup? And they're like, uh, we don't really eat soup that much anymore. So I'll say, okay, then maybe we'll get you a smaller bin for these, or maybe they won't have a bin at all. Maybe we'll clump them together with your breads or your pastas, if you know, it's a can of marinara or it's a soup that you're gonna have, you know, soup and sandwiches. And so you can customize later. You can get more detail later. But the biggest thing is making sure that every single thing in your pantry is fresh and it's something that if you go to pull it later this week, you're gonna be able to use it and not something that you're gonna have to throw away. I hope this episode was helpful. Please make sure to subscribe to the bonus content. The minimum contribution is only $3 a month, and you have access to all prior bonus episodes. We are currently on episode two of five of the moving series. Episodes two through five are only going to be posted in the bonus content. So if you're moving this summer or even this fall, I suggest you pay the three dollars. Join us in the bonus content so that you can save money later down the road on your upcoming move. Thank you so much, you guys. I will see you in the next episode.