I never knew I wanted a minimalist pantry. It kind of stuck up on me, when all I could think was, “Girl, you really need to organize your pantry! This is a mess!”
Do you feel like you always need to organize your kitchen pantry or that it’s never big enough or never neat enough?
Shortly into my journey to simplify my home, I learned I wasn’t really very good at organization.
I then discovered maybe instead of trying to organize it all with cute bins and storage baskets, which only created an organized mess, I could buy less.
Related Post: Benefits of Being a Minimalist Family
My minimalist pantry beginnings
Part of living with less meant creating more space in the kitchen pantry, and having a purposeful plan for how to use the food we already had on hand.
Living with less is far easier than figuring out how to organize the chaos.
A minimalist pantry and a little bit of meal planning will help you organize your kitchen pantry and take your money savings to a whole new level.
Food waste is huge in developed countries, and I was once a guilty party in contributing to the problem.
Part of my simple living journey has included figuring out how to fix my kitchen pantry food storage problems.
Now, I haven’t been shy in saying, I am not a typical minimalist. I’m simply on a journey to simplify my home and my life.
My pantry looks like a pantry. It is not a work of art. It is simple.
We are foodies. We love to taste a variety of foods, and our pantry reflects as much.
However, by buying less each week, you are actually becoming more purposeful in your purchases and consuming what you have ready to eat.
Food waste decreases dramatically. Grocery shopping gets easier because you have a plan, and you end up saving money.
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Here are 10 tips on how to create a minimalist pantry:
1. Take on a kitchen pantry and freezer clean-out challenge
After I minimized my kitchen and decluttered my kitchen pantry, I vowed to take on a no-spend grocery challenge one week out of every month.
It is the week when I try to use up all of my leftovers.
I can’t tell you how much money this plan has saved me in the past few years on the grocery bill. We also have way less food waste as a result of it.
Before going to the grocery store, first, go through your freezer and kitchen pantry. Are there any meals you can make which use up your ingredients on hand?
If you aren’t the next contestant for the Food Network’s Chopped, then you may want to check out this website that helps you plan meals with the ingredients you already have on hand. After a few months of using this tool regularly, you will feel like a meal planning master.
Usually, after our fridge and kitchen pantry clean-out challenge, the fridge is looking pretty bare, which is exactly what we want to prevent future food waste!
We also like to take this opportunity to clean the fridge drawers and wipe down the shelves once a month.
Related Post: Cure Your Kitchen Counter Clutter
2. Buy items from the bulk bins
Bulk items (not the Costco super-sized bulk boxes of processed foods, but real food sold out of bulk bins) are cheaper than packaged items.
Bulk foods can also be used in a variety of recipes without a set plan, so they are super helpful to have available as part of your minimalist kitchen pantry staples.
Bulk items are also pretty when they are displayed. Processed, boxed foods and packages can make your pantry look disorganized and messy!
You can buy so many grocery items in bulk nowadays, without visiting Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck).
If you have a Sprouts available, that is my favorite bulk purchase store. Even my local grocery store has limited items in bulk.
3. Minimalist pantry storage
Minimalist pantry storage can be easy. My favorite organizing secret for a pretty and functional minimalist pantry is to use mason jars. They will help you get organized in a flash.
You can buy or reuse jars of different sizes. We really like having at least four half-gallon-sized mason jars.
The half-gallon-sized mason jars are great for containing any bulk dry goods we purchase at Costco, like walnuts and almonds. The trick is to make sure you have a kitchen pantry space tall enough for them!
The quart-sized jars are what you can use for most items to organize your pantry. For example, quart-sized mason jars will hold approximately two pounds of dry beans.
The pint-sized mason jars are perfect for items you buy in bulk but in small quantities. For example, we use the pint-sized mason jars for items like hemp seeds, chia seeds, and flax seeds.
Rather than buying normal canning lids, I love the twist on plastic lids. They make them in wide mouth and regular mouth sizes. These are way easier to screw on and off and are washable.
If you want to get fancy, you can check out these bamboo lids for mason jars. They are very pretty.
The best thing about having mason jars in your kitchen pantry is how nice they look in your new minimalist kitchen.
Even if you don’t have a large kitchen, they can be left on a shelf for display and functionality.
We currently don’t have a kitchen pantry, so we use two kitchen cabinets to store our food items and a pantry stand-alone cabinet I found for $20 on Facebook Marketplace!
I love how the jars look in the small pantry! It makes finding items so much easier than sorting through boxes and plastic bags.
4. Meal plan every week
Meal planning saves you so much money and helps you create a minimalist kitchen pantry.
It will also help you organize your pantry quickly, as you will no longer fall victim to buying in excess.
First, use the items you already have available. (See #1.) Then, plan out your meals for the rest of the week. Going to the grocery store without a plan or too often can waste money and waste food.
I recommend planning for five meals a week cooked at home, one leftovers night and one night out (if that’s your thing). Meal planning is one way to save time grocery shopping too.
My favorite meal planning service is eMeals. If you have not tried it yet, sign up now for a 14-day free trial. It is so worth the $5/ month fee.
For $1.25/week, I save hundreds because I have a plan. That doesn’t even consider the time I save actually meal planning.
Seriously, check eMeals out! You won’t regret it! They even send you a shopping list you can directly upload to several online ordering services for pick-up…from your car. Grocery shopping has never been easier!
Related post: Review of eMeals: Meal Planning for Busy People
5. Embrace the idea of substitutions in your cooking
You can tweak just about anything when cooking.
One of my favorite quotes is from a vegan cookbook called “Thug Kitchen”. It says cooking isn’t “&*^% rocket science”. I think of this quote so often when I’m cooking and run out of something.
I’m not a talented cook, not by a long shot. My husband is the cook in our family.
Fun Fact: My dream was to run a food blog one day. Y’all, that’s never going to happen. As they say in the South, “Bless her heart!”
My favorite pantry substitutions:
Sugar: honey, agave, maple syrup
Butter: applesauce (when baking)
Vegetable oil: olive oil, coconut oil (awesome in baking), avocado oil
Vinegar: I’ve been known to interchange most vinegar types in a pinch, especially when making a salad dressing. I’m sure there are some vinegar experts having a fit right now, but hey, that’s what I do! Red wine vinegar, white wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, Champagne vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and white balsamic vinegar.
Nuts: Mix them up! If your recipe calls for walnuts and you don’t have any, no worries. Use any nut on hand. Unsweetened coconut flakes work well too.
My favorite substitution secret…flax seed egg substitutions. If you have flax seeds on hand, you always have eggs on hand, at least for your baking needs. You can grind one tablespoon of flax seeds into a fine powder, mix it with 3 T of water, and then wait a couple of minutes. It will become gelatinous and ready to use! How cool.
6. Experiment with whole food cooking and clean eating
Clean eating does more than help you develop a minimalist kitchen pantry and get organized. It can change how you feel, for the better!
Stop buying processed foods that take up space in your pantry and can only be used in one way. Instead, embrace whole foods that can be diversified and enjoyed in a number of ways.
Ideas for easy whole food meals:
Oatmeal: You can add berries, nuts, yogurt, and seeds.
Homemade granola: The recipes are endless! Have a different cereal every week using the ingredients you have on hand.
Canned tomatoes: Use them to make instant pot spaghetti sauce, tomato soup or add them to a dried bean soup.
Wild rice and brown rice: Spruce up any meal with a beautiful side of rice rather than the prepackaged, artificially flavored choices.
7. Clean out your kitchen pantry and fridge monthly
If you use up your ingredients regularly and meal plan before shopping, you likely won’t have much cleaning to do.
However, it seems the condiments and pre-packaged foods are what usually get me.
Either make a plan for obscure items in your fridge or kitchen pantry or throw them out if they are expired or turning into a science experiment.
We once had four jars of sun-dried tomatoes. I’m not even sure how that happened.
Now that we do a regular fridge and kitchen pantry clean out, that kind of condiment hoarding doesn’t happen.
Regular maintenance and decluttering will definitely help you organize your pantry and keep it clean on a regular basis.
8. Embrace the rule of one
Embracing the rule of one is one of the most essential rules in minimalism.
Multiples of anything leads to clutter. You don’t need multiple flavors of jelly or ten different varieties of salad dressing.
If one is too limiting, keep no more than two different varieties on hand. If you are sick of them, make your own. Homemade dressings are fun to experiment with and delicious.
9. Don’t buy something just because it’s on sale
Now, I will stock up on pantry items if they are on sale. However, when it comes to random food items or processed foods, I usually don’t buy them just because they’re a good deal.
Buying unnecessarily is how my kitchen pantry used to get out of control! Beware of the power of marketing.
If you want to organize your pantry, you are going to need to practice some willpower!
One way I avoided this pitfall was I became more purposeful with my coupon usage. I stopped clipping coupons for items we didn’t have a plan for only because they were a good deal.
I’ve done extreme couponing. I was good at it. I realized I was ending up with a bunch of crappy food we didn’t need or want. So I stopped.
Once we started eating clean foods, coupons weren’t much use anymore. Why can’t they give you a coupon for a bag of apples?!
10. Embrace the idea of leftovers
One of my favorite bloggers, Tiffany, over at Don’t Waste the Crumbs once said something about leftovers that stuck with me.
She said something to the effect of, put on your big girl panties and eat your leftovers. (I’m not sure if she actually used the reference big girl panties, but that’s how I saved it in my head.)
If you made too much, then learn from your mistake but don’t waste it. Eat it or freeze it, and then move on.
Organize your pantry for the last time with a minimalist kitchen pantry!
A simple, minimalist pantry is fairly easy to attain.
I’m not like those reality shows where they come in and completely empty your pantry. I’m a little more practical and frugal.
Get rid of the crap you know you will never eat or should never eat. Clear out the excess slowly.
Then, just like with other purchases you make for your home, be more purposeful with what you spend your money on and what you allow to enter your home.
When you start to simplify and organize your kitchen pantry by turning it into a more minimalist pantry, meal planning becomes easier.
That overwhelming feeling you get when you open your kitchen pantry doors goes away, and food waste diminishes greatly.
If you don’t enjoy cooking now, you may develop a love for it. It feels incredible when you are trying to save money one week, have what appears to be no food, and then create amazing meals from odd and end ingredients.
It also feels amazing to stop the excess from ever entering your kitchen so you can have that amazing organized minimalist pantry!
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12 Things I No Longer Buy Since Becoming a Minimalist
10 Brilliant Ways Minimalism Can Save You Money This Year
6 Simple Steps to Start Decluttering Your Kitchen
I am super motivated to go fix my pantry space after reading your post. I really despise kitchen maintenance but reading this it came to me how we feed the monster ourself.
How creative to look back at what we already have and create meals out of that before we run to buy more items. Loved your post!
And you cracked me up with ‘it’s not a work of art’. Same here ha but I think everything in mason jars would look lovely in itself.
I need those.
I love the mason jars in our minimalist pantry. Mostly because I’ve never had a “real” pantry. Just random bookshelves and cabinets. I dream of a house with an actual pantry one day. However, by then, I won’t know how to fill it!
Remember that many of the items in are pantries come packaged. Why? As light, moisture and air are introduced to products the nutritional content lessens. The older the product is in a jar, plastic ware, etc., the less good it is for us. The alternative should be to take the manufacture’s containers with product in them and put them in the pretty storage containers. As they are used they should sealed as best as possible by pressing the air out, rolling the top, then using a rubber band/s, food storage clip or even a clothes pin. Remember to keep them out of the light – natural or otherwise and to date them with the purchase date. The exception to all of this is if you use a “seal a meal” style unit after every use.
Remember to take a calculator with you to the grocery store. You will use it to get unit price per serving. Yes, it is listed on the shelf tag, but it is in that little tiny print. Sometimes the larger package you choose the more expensive it is.