How to clean and declutter your pantry

9honey Living’s The Wash Up: Your 30-day spring cleaning guide is a month-long series aimed at making your annual house clean easier with hacks and expert advice.
You’re not alone if you spend more time looking at images of beautifully organised pantries than keeping them clean and tidy.
Many of us can admit to not cleaning them often enough or simply shoving or tossing packets and containers back in instead of adhering to an organising system.
That’s easily fixed though, and now is as good a time as ever to dedicate an hour or two (depending on the size of your pantry) to cleaning and reorganising your pantry.
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There are four basic steps to the process:
There’s no getting around it unfortunately, to clean out your pantry you’ll need to take every single thing out.
Removing the food, containers and storage gadgets in your pantry makes it easier to clean shelves and see what you have so you can make a decision on what to keep.
Empty shelves also provide a blank canvas to consider more effective ways to reorganise your pantry.
And having the contents on the bench means you can wipe each one as they go back in so you’re not dirtying the space you’ve just cleaned.
Now the pantry is clear, the first thing to do is remove dust and crumbs.
If you have lots of crumbs, a vacuum will help or you can sweep out the shelves using a dustpan and brush. Meanwhile, dry dusting all surfaces in the pantry with a cloth will make it easier to wipe using a cleaning product.
Once you’ve dusted and swept up crumbs it’s time to clean the shelves (including the sides and undersides/tops of shelves). You can use warm water and dishwashing liquid for this or whatever multipurpose cleaning spray you have on hand.
That should be enough to clean shelves but any stubborn stains or sticky residue will need something a little stronger. Options include adding vinegar to your water and dish soap spray and scrubbing with a gentle brush like a toothbrush, using a magic eraser or scraping with a spatula or plastic paint scraper.
READ MORE: The easiest ways to keep your fridge organised
While your freshly washed pantry shelves dry, take the time to thoroughly look through all the ingredients, snacks and storage containers/gadgets you removed from the pantry.
Toss expired food and broken storage units out, but for anything you don’t want to keep that is still edible or usable, see if it can be donated or used by a family member or friend.
Once you have all the items you plan to keep group them into categories (such as baking or spices) and by which shelves they will go on.
Take this time to consider if the previous pantry setup was serving you well. If the cupboard only stayed organised for a brief period after the last time you cleaned it out, it could be worth tweaking a few things, like storing a category on a different shelf or using a different storage gadget.
Now it’s time to put everything back in.
To help you get the most functional setup here are some useful tips and hacks for pantry storage.
– Line shelves with clear liners to make it easier to clean and provide a little grip for jars and containers
– Use liquid chalk markers to label containers quickly and easily instead of spending time printing out labels. You can also write on the expiry date with this pen.
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– Make use of dead space with under shelf storage basket, pull-out shelves and shelf inserts.
– Make it easier to reach oils and sauces by using a lazy Susan style turntable (or two).
– Only decant ingredients like pasta and flour into other containers if that’s what works for you. It might look aesthetically pleasing, but if you find it time consuming and expensive it’s OK not to do or only decant some supplies.
– Consider storing the entire packet of ingredients inside a container so you have all the expiry and information to hand and not lost in the rubbish.
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