Easily Declutter Your Pantry With This Dollar Store Find

The pantry is a crucial place in the kitchen. Serious home cooks use the pantry to store ingredients like pasta, flour, and oil, while more casual cooks hold things like snacks, cereal, and even soft drinks. But a catch-all closet for the kitchen is a natural recipe for clutter. That's why many people like to incorporate bins and baskets in their kitchen storage — aesthetically pleasing containers that will keep all of their cooking supplies organized. But before you head to Home Depot to solve all your kitchen storage struggles, you might want to visit your local dollar store to purchase bins and baskets at a fraction of the price.

Not only are dollar stores great places to find affordable kitchen decor and summer BBQ supplies, but they also have a nice selection of organizational bins. Most dollar stores have a number of different basket materials made from wire, plastic, cloth, and even woven straw. You are sure to find a storage option that works best for you. The prices for bins at a Dollar Tree range from $1.25 to $5.00, which is drastically low compared to specialty organization stores, whose prices go between $2.99 and $387 for a 13-piece kitchen pantry kit. Kitchen storage is more about function than style, so the difference in quality between a high-end bin and a cheaper option is not super important.

How you organize the bins is vital, and the first thing you need to do is make sure you are discarding items as needed. Pantries can easily attract pests and critters that crawl into some poorly stored items. Also, while a big number of sell-by dates are mostly suggestions, ignoring the dates on some key ingredients like tomatoes or pickles can make you sick. When in doubt, double-check on the internet.

Storage experts suggest going ingredient shopping in your pantry before you go to a grocery store. Doing this will prevent you from buying the same thing you already have. This is a great thing to do before you meal prep, so you can be sure to use up the things in your pantry too. Grouping items in bins together, like for example oils or sauces, will allow you to find things quickly. For maximum efficiency purposes, be sure to label the bins.

Another big tip is to use a lazy Susan to organize your spices. The ability to spin through any spices you might need, while avoiding kitchen clutter, makes it an ideal storage solution. Luckily, most dollar stores also sell lazy Susans for a good price.