7 MINIMALIST PANTRY IDEAS & TIPS: HOW TO SIMPLIFY YOUR PANTRY?

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Simplify your pantry with these brilliant minimalist pantry ideas and tips! 

Pantry items are staples in our kitchen: we use them every day to prepare delicious meals for our families and ourselves.

Because of that, we may be tempted to stock up and overbuy them at the grocery store. 

As a result, we end up with an overflowing pantry.

Finding the exact ingredients we want becomes hard, time-consuming, and energy-draining. 

Having too much in your pantry can be stressful, so you might want to simplify your pantry to make cooking as easy and effortless as possible. 

In this article, you’ll find 7 minimalist pantry ideas and tips that will help you have an organized, clutter-free pantry!

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What is a minimalist pantry? 

A minimalist pantry is a pantry where you only keep essential ingredients that you use for cooking on a regular basis.

It’s clutter-free and does not contain anything you don’t like, use, or need. 

A minimalist pantry is very easy to work with and maintain and allows you to find what you’re looking for at a glimpse. 

Why should you have a minimalist pantry?

When you have a minimalist pantry, it’s easy for you to know what you have in it as everything is visible and neatly organized.

Thanks to that, you’re a lot less likely to buy extra or unnecessary food at the grocery store, which can save you a lot of money. 

You also waste a lot less food because you don’t have food that you’ve forgotten about at the back of your pantry.

Plus, it’s easier to be more careful about when things expire and go bad. 

Another great way having a minimalist pantry saves you money is by making it more efficient and thus more enjoyable for you to cook at home instead of ordering take-outs or eating at a restaurant. 

Indeed, you can find your ingredients more easily and effortlessly, so cooking in your kitchen becomes more appealing to you.  

What’s more, having a minimalist pantry means that you keep fewer items in it, so you have fewer options and thus experience less decision fatigue. 

Overall, I find that having a simplified pantry makes opening it and seeing it every day more enjoyable as it’s not jam-packed. 

7 minimalist pantry ideas & tips: How to simplify your pantry?

1. Start by decluttering to create a minimalist pantry

If you want to create a minimalist pantry, start by going through everything you have in it and removing what you know you won’t eat. 

If you’re wondering how to declutter the pantry, ask yourself these few simple decluttering questions: 

• Is this expired? How long has it been open for? 
• Am I realistically going to eat it before its expiration date?
• Do I even like this? 

Get rid of anything that is expired or has gone bad as well as anything you know you won’t eat. 

Of course, some pantry items can safely be eaten after their expiration dates, especially if they are stored in a cool, dry place.

Check online if you can still eat them but if you can’t, declutter them guilt-free.

If you have a compost, consider composting them. 

If not, don’t feel bad for throwing away food in the trash if it’s expired.

Expired food is better in the trash than in your home, where you could get sick if you use it. 

Also, give away pantry items that you know you won’t eat before they expire.

You could donate them to a food bank or simply to a friend or neighbor. 

As you get rid of that food, reflect for a second about why you didn’t end up eating it.

Doing this will help you make better buying decisions later on. 

Read more: 30 things to declutter for a minimalist kitchen

2. Have staple meals 

Now that your pantry is clutter-free, write down a list of staple meals you like cooking on a regular basis.

See what ingredients they require you to have and create your own minimalist pantry list. 

That way, you will know exactly what pantry items you need to have in your pantry at all times.

In other words, you’ll see what you need to repurchase at the store every week.

This will greatly simplify your cooking routine as well as your grocery shopping trips! 

You won’t spend as much time thinking about what you should cook every day and you will be less likely to forget about restocking certain foods. 

Having predefined staple meals doesn’t mean that you can’t get creative and try out new recipes from time to time.

But knowing what you’re preparing for breakfast, lunch, or dinner most of the time will highly simplify everything in the kitchen, especially during busy times. 

3. Keep your inventory low to have a minimalist pantry

If you want to have a minimalist pantry, you need to keep your inventory of food low.

This doesn’t mean you can’t stock up on certain things and have a backup supply of items. 

However, don’t go overboard buying dozens of packs of pasta at once or even just a few when you rarely eat that food. 

Be realistic with yourself.

Asking yourself these questions before buying something might be helpful: What food do we eat the most at home?

What do we rarely touch?

How often can I go grocery shopping? 

The number of pantry items from each category you want to buy will depend on several factors.

For instance, how often you eat them, how much space you have available in your pantry, and how often you go to the store. 

You may also sometimes want to stock up on certain foods, for instance when they’re on sale.

And that’s fine! 

However, always keep in mind that to simplify your pantry, you need to keep your inventory at a manageable level. 

Ideally, you should be able to see everything you have at a glance when you open your pantry.

If you can’t see everything, you might have too much. 

4. Shop with a grocery list

Whenever you go to the store to buy pantry items, bring a grocery list with you to avoid buying things you already have at home. 

If you’ve followed my tip from the second point of this article, you should have created a minimalist pantry list.

Before going grocery shopping, compare that list with what is left in your pantry.

See what you need to repurchase and write it down on a grocery list. 

I also recommend that you add things to your grocery list throughout the week as you use things up or realize you are running low on some staples. 

Having a grocery list will help you not to buy more than you actually need and will prevent you from impulse buying food you initially didn’t intend to buy. 

5. Buy rare ingredients with intention

Have you ever bought an ingredient for a recipe that you only ended up using once?

We’ve all been there! 

The problem with those ingredients is that they end up cluttering up our pantry for way too long and we feel guilty every time we look at them. 

To avoid buying pantry items you will only use once, pause before buying things you don’t regularly purchase.

Think about whether you will realistically eat it.

Have a specific plan for those things: when and how often will I use it? 

If it’s an ingredient you’ve never bought before, search for several recipes you can try with it.

Not only that but decide when you will actually try those recipes so that the ingredients won’t end up forgotten and lost in your pantry. 

Also, if you want to try a new recipe that requires you to buy something you will only use once, try to swap this ingredient for something else you already have.

Or consider skipping that ingredient altogether if possible. 

6. Minimalist pantry organization: how to organize a minimalist pantry? 

The great thing about a minimalist pantry is that it’s super easy to keep neat and tidy.

However, we can optimize it even more by organizing it in a practical and useful way. 

Here are some minimalist pantry organization ideas you might want to try out in your pantry! 

Group like-items together

In your pantry, keep things organized by category.

For instance, store all your pasta together, which you can keep near your rice, quinoa, and other grains.

Have all your baking items in one place, and your sauces in another.

Designate another spot for your nuts and seeds, another for your breakfast cereals, and yet another for your lentils and legumes. 

Grouping like-items together will make finding things easier and quicker.

Plus, you’ll be able to see at a glance what you have left in your pantry, which will help you avoid buying things you already have. 

Keep older items at the front and newer ones at the back 

Organize your pantry items so that you have the older ones (those you need to eat first) at the front and the newer ones (those you can eat later) at the back.

Check the expiration dates to make sure you are organizing them correctly. 

Doing so will help you eat your pantry items before they go bad and expire.

This will reduce food waste and save you money! 

Store your pantry staples in clear containers

Transfer the ingredients that come in bags or packaging into clear, transparent containers.

My favorites are glass jars like these!

They look beautiful and contribute to that minimalist aesthetic I love! 

Glass jars are perfect for storing everything from pasta, rice, and seeds, to lentils, flour, sugar, and more. 

Use baskets and bins to keep things contained 

If you like having some back-ups, consider storing each category of food in a specific basket or storage bin.

This will keep them contained while keeping them easily accessible. 

I also highly recommend that you store smaller items, like snacks and crackers, in baskets.

That way, they won’t get everywhere and create a mess in your pantry! 

Use lazy Susans if you have a pantry with deep shelves

If your pantry has deep shelves or cupboards, you might find it hard to organize things so that they’re easily visible and accessible. 

A great solution to that problem is to use a lazy Susan like this one.

This circular tray spins to make items easily reachable, so you won’t have any food forgotten at the back of your pantry anymore! 

Store your tea collection in a tea bag organizer

If you like drinking tea using tea bags, you might have a ton of different tea boxes in your pantry.

They can take up a lot of space unnecessarily, particularly when they’re half empty. 

I recommend that you keep your entire tea collection contained in one place using a practical tea bag organizer like this one.

Thanks to it, you’ll be able to see everything effortlessly! 

Minimalist pantry labels

If you’re using bins and baskets to organize your pantry, consider labeling them so that you know exactly what’s in them. 

I love this label maker, but you can also use reusable chalkboard labels like these.

They’re waterproof and have a wide range of uses around the home, not just in the kitchen!

Read more: 12 minimalist home organization ideas for an organized space

7. Review your minimalist pantry regularly

Now that you have a clutter-free and organized pantry, the key is to maintain minimalism and keep the excess from coming back.  

So go through and declutter your pantry at least once every three months.

See what you haven’t used in a while and either get rid of it immediately or commit to eating it in the next few days. 

If you opt for the second option, put it in a visible spot in your pantry or kitchen so that you don’t forget about it. 

If you don’t know how to use up certain food items, I highly recommend you check out the websites Super Cook or Food Combo.

Both are helpful to find recipes you can make with a specific ingredient that you have. 

During your pantry declutter, check all the expiration dates and make sure to use up what is about to go bad.

Lastly, tidy and reorganize your pantry at the end so it’s organized in a useful and practical way. 

Final thoughts on minimalist pantry ideas and how to simplify your pantry

I hope you’ve found this article about minimalist pantry ideas and tips helpful and that it allowed you to simplify your pantry. 

You should now be able to find your pantry items very easily and effortlessly, making preparing your meals more enjoyable. 

If you liked this article, you might want to read the following ones too:

• 18 minimalist kitchen essentials for simple, efficient cooking
• How to store food (in a sustainable way) to reduce food waste?
• The best eco-friendly alternatives to Ziploc bags to store food sustainably
• 15 eco-friendly alternatives to aluminum foil for cooking, baking, & storage

What are your favorite minimalist pantry ideas and tips?

Please leave them in a comment!

Don’t forget to share this blog post with your friends so they can simplify their pantry and make it as clutter-free as possible too. 

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