I love looking at pictures of these beautiful, completely organized pantries. Who wouldn’t want one of those? All of the containers are the same, everything is completely lined up and there is no mess in sight.

I do have an organized pantry, at least some of the time! I’ve already written about how I use lazy susans in my pantry, and I think that they are a great tool. But, I see all of these pictures of the IDEAL pantry, and mine doesn’t come close. But really, that’s OK. Do those pictures really reflect the items YOU have in your pantry? I have a bunch of different types of foods in mine. Canned goods, boxes of cereal, several types of flour plus everything else needed for baking, peanut butter, syrup, the list goes on. I cannot possibly re-package everything in there to make it look pristine – it would cost a fortune!

I did need to find a decent solution for baking supplies, because I truly had a mess. I searched around for what I wanted – I needed different sized containers that were air-tight and some that would stack. Here is what I did. I first made a list of the items that needed to go into containers, then I tried to estimate what size container I needed. I searched for containers at several stores. There were some really cool ones at specialty stores, but I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on them. I tried the dollar store, but that didn’t work for me either. I finally found my in-between solution at Walmart.

For the rest of the pantry, I just organize like items in groups. I keep my cereal in their original boxes – yes, it would be nice for them to be in uniform containers, but is it really necessary? No! I use lazy susans to keep canned items easy to find and accessible. Rectangular plastic bins to hold packets and small items. A good rule of thumb is to keep items you use most often at the easiest point to reach, and your least-used items in the less convenient areas. If your kids need to reach items, make sure that they can!

If you have a walk-in pantry, keeping a step stool inside makes reaching those high shelves easy. One big DON’T: Please, please do not store cleaning products by your food. It’s just not a good idea.

What works for you?