By Tina O’Keeffe, Chief Organizing Officer of Stow and Behold, LLC
In my 10 years of organizing homes, I have learned to start with an assessment and then a mini-project.
We assess the house or apartment from top to bottom, take notes, discuss challenges, etc. Then we dive in to do something that will give the client a sense of what the process is like, what I am like and to give them a quick success so that they are inspired to keep going.
So after the assessment, I ask my clients where they want to begin. I ask, “What is bothering you the most?” Or “Where do you find you are the most frustrated?” Nine out of 10 times the answer is “The kitchen.” And 9 out of 10 times, we start somewhere else.
Why? It’s not that I don’t want to organize the kitchen. The kitchen is the brain of the home. It is the command center for many families. It is the room where people spend the most time in their homes besides sleeping in their bedrooms.
We aren’t avoiding the kitchen, but we are addressing the deeper issue: the pantry. A pantry does not have to mean a room in the home that is dedicated to storage. It can be in the basement. It can be a closet nearby. It can be adjacent shelves.
But it is a storage area meant to support and “feed” the kitchen. Yes, even your kitchen needs to be fed because the truth is that all the food and kitchen appliances are the cause of clutter in your kitchen, the food waste and spoilage due to lack of visibility and frustration when preparing meals.
With the rise of wholesale purchasing from stores like BJs and Costco, individuals are buying in bulk and then struggling to store and use these items. Pantry or pantry-like storage is the place where this happens.
Sometimes a pantry already exists and the system needs to be refined. Other times we are creating a pantry: finding a place in the home where we can house the overflow that belongs in the kitchen but cannot always reside there permanently like kitchen appliances, dry goods or event root vegetables.
Building a pantry does not always mean construction. It can mean repurposing an existing space. It may mean building shelves or cleaning out a cluttered closet to use for storage.
How do you “build” a pantry?
- Locate a space in your home that can be used as a pantry. A closet, existing shelves or an area where shelves can be installed. Think a hall closet, the area at the bottom of the basement stairs or a part of the kitchen that is being underutilized.
- Organize your pantry area. If items are residing there now, take them all out, evaluate them, decide what is being kept and return those items to the pantry. Dispose of what is not being kept.
- Of the items being kept/stored in your pantry, ask yourself: “How are these purchased and in what quantity?” Determine how much space is necessary to house that volume of intake. If you buy toilet paper in bundles of 24, will they fit here when you return from the store? Make sure that you are accounting for the full bundle when you size the area that will house them.
- Label the shelves. Labels help to make sure that you are keeping the space dedicated for these items. Labels also ensure that all those living in the household are aware of what belongs where. If things need to flex and change, use labels that can be redone like chalkboard plaques or sleeves where paper can be inserted. Keep the labeling supplies nearby for easy update and changes.
- Measure the shelves. Before buying bins, totes or baskets to help organize your pantry, make sure to measure the space and buy products that actually fit. Too many times clients buy product first because they are excited only to find that the products actually don’t fit in the space or are not the right solution.
Once you have identified, organized and planned your pantry situation, you are ready to tackle your kitchen, now with a keen eye for alternative storage for items that are not being used on a daily or even weekly basis.
You also have a backup area to store items that come in large quantities. One roll of paper towel is “active” in the kitchen, a second roll is stored under the sink for quick access when the active roll runs out and then the rest of the paper towels live in the pantry.
When you run out of your active roll, replenish with your second and then replenish that back up from the pantry. And now you have a functioning system.
A pantry allows the kitchen to function more freely and efficiently. It allows inventory to be seen more readily. And, finally, it allows the heart of the home, the kitchen, to beat more steadily.
Reduce clutter. Optimize space. Restore happiness. That is the result of a great pantry solution.
In 2013, Tina O’Keeffe founded Stow and Behold to help others get organized. She is a writer, a returned Peace Corps volunteer (Ukraine), and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (Go Quakers!). Stow and Behold provides professional organizing services to clients who seek to reduce clutter, optimize space and restore happiness to their homes and offices. Stow and Behold offers clients trust, reliability and efficiency in a friendly, approachable style. The business focus of Stow and Behold is to donate items to charity so clients feel good about letting things go.
Tina’s husband Thomas is the person who told her to start her own organizing business so he gets credit here. They live in Stewart Manor with their three daughters. And if you know what three girls are like, you know you had better be organized! To learn more about Stow and Behold, check out www.stowandbehold.com.