Every few months I clean out and organize my pantry. Well, I should say I use to clean out my pantry, now it’s a chore I’ve passed along to my girls.
It’s easy for a pantry to get disorganized and food to get lost in the back, especially if you are stockpiling and shopping sales.
I love to stock up when my favorite items are on sale, so my pantry is usually pretty full and was often disorganized. Now that my girls clean it out every month or so, I can almost always find what I need and things don’t expired hiding on the top shelf.
If your children are small (or have trouble remembering where stuff goes), I highly recommend labeling the shelves (or areas) in your pantry.
I actually got this idea from one of my kids. After they had the chore of cleaning out the pantry, they were upset with their siblings for not putting food where it belonged.
So she created pantry labels on index cards to everyone could put things away correctly.
With the labels on the shelves my children (or other unnamed people) have no excuse for not putting things away correctly in the pantry.
While I did think her six-year old handwriting was cute, we decided to make some prettier labels for labeling our pantry shelves.
We created two sizes of labels, large and small. (Super creative, right?) At first I wanted labels that I could print out on the Avery 5262 address labels. However I quickly learned that those don’t work well with wire shelves.
We created two different sizes that will work with basically any type of pantry shelves, including cabinet pantries.
To make the labels yourself take heavy duty paper (card stock or 3×5 cards) and write out the different categories of the items in your pantry.
Or you can download these cute labels and print them out.
Tape or clothespin the labels to the shelves in your pantry.
The small labels print on Avery labels 5262.
I recommend printing the labels, then attaching them to card stock. Or just use card stock and laminate the labels so they last longer.
The larger labels (works better for wire shelves) are about the size of business cards and I recommend printing them on card stock and cutting them out.
Fill out the form below and the pantry labels (plus another surprise free printable) will magically appear in your inbox!
Jackie Brown says
Great idea, thanks for sharing, I shared on my site as well!
Karen says
Thanks for the tips! For my pantry I need to pull eveything out~ yes, everything! Then I need to deep clean and put it all back. But, this time, it’s going in by expiration dates… And… it will be cycled that way from now on… new food in on the left shelves… then slid to the right as we use up the older foods… ‘Pantry Surprise’ will bea lot more inteesting at ou house for a while! OR… maybe it will be yummier as we’ll be eating food we’d forgotten we’d bought!!!
Margie says
I actually put my can goods and spices in alphabetical order-easy for people to find stuff and easy to put away.
Katy says
Wow, what a great post! I love the labels!
I would love it if you linked your tips up to my organization link party this week. I know my readers would love to see them: http://thriftmeblog.com/lets-organize-2012-pantry-recap-link-party/
Thanks!
susanne says
we are a family of 6 with HALF that size pantry! I would love one that big!!!!!
Looks nice but how do you affix the labels to your shelves so they don’t fall off? I imagine mine all on the floor after a day or so.
Denise says
Susanne, if you can get a hold of some sandpaper, simply rough up the finish on the shelves wipe with a dry cloth and then affix your label. It should hold. The other and cleaner option is to purchase insert brads from your local craft store, a package of 6 usually goes for about 5 bucks. They come with tiny little nails, affix to the end of the shelf and then insert you description into the holder. Beautiful!!!
Tabitha says
How did you make the labels? I would really like to label kids drawers and bins in the closet. 2 of them are non-readers.
Diana says
These are great – I adapted some labels for my kid’s toy boxes and I want to use these. Do you have an editable version? I’d like to make them bilingual (we do both English and Spanish for everything).