Your kitchen and pantry food items should be organized and protected with the right labels and containers. Using good methods for labeling and protecting your food will help you locate food items in your pantry and can help protect your food from pests. Here are three tips you can implement in your kitchen and pantry to help with this process.
Use Containers for Storage
Putting your food pantry into good order with the right containers can help you find pantry items easier. Uncluttering and organizing your pantry can also give you a sense of calm and help you feel in control of your life again. Researchers at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute found that when your environment is cluttered, you cannot focus. Just by organizing your kitchen pantry, a place you may use as many as three times a day, you can improve your mental health.
So, as you fill your pantry, stack similar items together instead of jumbling cans and boxes wherever they can fit. Food items that come in plastic bags do not stack well in your cupboard and can get lost behind other items. Instead, you can empty them into glass mason jars or tall plastic lidded bins, so you can store them more accessibly in your pantry. Food in boxes that are opened but not used up can be stored inside a jar or other lidded container. This will make your pantry contents look better.
If you ever have mice or other pests find their way into your pantry, they will not be able to chew through glass or plastic to get to the foods. Foods kept in their original bags and paper packages can become contaminated when a mouse chews a hole into the packaging.
Use Label Stickers
After you have repackaged foods from their bags and boxes into glass jars or plastic bins, you can use sticker bottle labels to help in your organization. You can buy blank sticker labels at many online and local stores, such as http://www.northwestlabel.com/.
Apply the sticker on the outside of the plastic bin or jar and you can write its contents on the sticker. Chalkboard sticker labels are especially convenient. When you place a chalkboard sticker on the outside of a container, write on the sticker using chalk to indicate the contents inside the container. Then, if you want to reuse the container for a different food item, erase the writing and rewrite it in chalk.
A label on each plastic and glass container is an easy way to help you remember the contents of each container, especially the ones that are not transparent. Decorative jar labels are also a fun way to add creativity to your kitchen and pantry.
Use these bottle labels to also label specific shelves inside your pantry for commonly stored food items to help your organization even more.
Organize Alphabetically
Containers of spices and seasonings are small and it is easy to end up with twenty to thirty different containers. For this reason, it is important to organize your spices and seasonings. A good way to organize is to use the alphabet.
Grocery stores use the alphabetizing technique when stocking their shelves with small items, such as spices, vitamins, and other over-the-counter medications. If you have a spice cupboard or a spice rack, you can line up all your spices in alphabetical order. Then, when you need to look for a specific spice, you won't need to search through all the containers until you find the right one. As long as you know the alphabet, you can quickly find the spice or seasoning you are looking for, then finish cooking your meal.
Use these three tips to help organize and protect your pantry food.
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