Store More In Your Kitchen Pantry With The Help Of Deep Shelves

If your pantry happens to have some deep shelves (shelves that are more than 20 inches in depth), these seemingly bottomless pits can actually be very helpful when it comes to storing more items. The thing is, how you organize your stuff is what will make or break the space. To find out the best strategy for deep shelves, Food Republic spoke to Elena Navarro, professional organizer of Sparkly Maid Austin.

According to Navarro, the biggest no-no when it comes to deep shelves is treating them like regular ones where you just dump whatever you buy and walk away. Instead, organizing your items is going to save you a ton of frustration (and money!). "A system is important because if left unstructured, you are going to create a graveyard of abandoned cereal boxes, expired cans, and snacks that are gone until you come across them again a year later," Navarro said.

When it comes to deep shelving units, Navarro suggests incorporating layers via clear plastic bins or labeled baskets. By doing this, she said you'll be able to group items by category and then slide them out like drawers for easy access. "Think of it as creating zones on your shelving unit; one bin for baking, one for grains, one for snacks," Navarro said. "When you want something, you'll pull out an entire bin instead of feeling around aimlessly."

If you want to create even more visual appeal, you can use different organizational methods for your shelves. "Tiered risers are great for canned goods, but they can be used for jars and sauces as well, just to make sure that nothing gets hidden," Elena Navarro suggested, adding that you can also pick up a lazy Susan if you want a more vintage storage hack for eliminating clutter.

Just keep in mind that each shelf should have an overarching theme. "One shelf shouldn't have ten different types of food on it. It just confuses the system and makes it harder to find," Navarro said. For example, dedicate one shelf for snacks, one for vitamins and supplements, and one for all your Italian staple ingredients. And then within those shelves, group accordingly (pastas like ziti and penne in one bin, tomato products in another, etc.).

If you really want to go above and beyond, Navarro recommends labeling the front edge of the shelf, as "this helps to train everyone in the house to return items to the right spot and keep the system from totally falling apart after one week." When it comes down to it, though, just make sure that you treat deep shelves more like a larger organizational system, filled with categories that make sense to how you function in the kitchen. "Remember, visibility, containment, and consistency are key," Navarro concluded.