Pantry Organization Bins: What to Buy (and What to Skip)

Don’t buy pantry bins first. Clear one shelf, take out what’s expired, damaged or never eaten, and group what’s left. Then measure the shelf and count your groups. That count is how many bins you need, and most pantries need fewer than you’d think. Do one shelf per 15‑minute timer.

Below are five steps in order, with a table for picking the kind of bin and a rule for counting them. The steps, the categories and the counting rule are ours. The container rule comes from Dana K. White. The food storage facts come from the National Pesticide Information Center at Oregon State University and from Ohio State University Extension. Each one is linked where it appears.

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Why bins come last

Dana K. White, who writes A Slob Comes Clean, puts it in four words: “Containers are for containing.” The bin is the limit. In her words: “I don’t need the markers that don’t fit.”

The pantry works the same way. If you buy bins before you know what’s staying, you buy bins for food you’re about to toss. And a bin that’s too tall or too deep for your shelf just becomes more stuff in the way.

What you need: a trash bag, a box for unopened food to give away, a tape measure, a pen, and a timer set to 15 minutes.

Step 1: Clear one shelf

Take everything off one shelf, and leave the others for later. Inside the timer, use Dana K. White’s 5 steps: trash first, then the easy stuff, then obvious donations, and the hard decisions last.

Take out:

• Bulging cans. Ohio State University Extension says “If cans are bulging, the food inside is spoiled and they should be discarded.” The same page warns that dents on the side seam or rim seams mean “the food was exposed to air.”
• Old canned goods. OSU Extension gives these times: low-acid cans (meat, soups, corn, beans) “can be stored 2-5 years,” and high-acid ones (tomatoes, juices, pickles) “should be used within 12-18 months.”
• Packages with bugs. The National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC) at Oregon State says to take the inner bags out of boxes and roll them around, “looking for clumps or webbing.”
• Food nobody in your house eats. If it’s unopened and still in date, put it in the give-away box. Food banks and pantries set their own rules, so ask yours what they accept.
• Things that aren’t food and don’t belong here. Take them back to their room now.

Wipe the shelf before anything goes back. NPIC notes that pantry moth larvae “can survive on small amounts of food under cabinets and in corners,” so the crumbs matter.

Time: one timer per shelf.

Step 2: Group what’s left

Put the food that stays into groups on the counter. Use the groups that match how you cook. These are a starting point:

• Baking (flour, sugar, baking soda)
• Grains and pasta
• Breakfast (cereal, oats)
• Snacks
• Canned goods
• Sauces, oils and condiments
• Backups (the second jar of peanut butter, the extra pack of pasta)

Inside each group, oldest in front. OSU Extension calls it “FIRST IN, FIRST OUT. This means you use the oldest products first.” NPIC gives the same advice to keep pantry moths away: “Use older food products first.”

Step 3: Measure the shelf

Before you shop, write down three numbers for each shelf:

1. Width: how much room you have side to side
2. Depth: front edge to back wall
3. Height: shelf to the bottom of the shelf above (that’s the tallest bin that fits)

Write the depth down twice. It decides more than you’d think: on a deep shelf, the back half is where food gets lost. One Reddit user with a pantry 30 inches deep wrote, “If I can’t see it, it doesn’t exist to me.” Other people in the same thread suggested bins as long as the shelf is deep, so you pull the whole bin out like a drawer. It’s one person’s story and wasn’t tested, but it fits the problem.

If you have a door that swings into the pantry, check it doesn’t hit anything you plan to put on the shelves.

Step 4: Pick the type of bin

Ask three questions about each group:

1. Do you need to see how much is left? Then clear.
2. Does it need to stay sealed? Then airtight.
3. Is it on a deep or low shelf? Then something you can pull out by a handle.

Type	Good for	Skip it for
Clear bin (open top or handle)	Snacks, packets, anything you restock often, deep shelves where you’d lose things	Stuff you’d rather not see (bulk paper goods, backups)
Basket or opaque bin (woven, wood, fabric)	Low shelves and the floor, bulky bags, backups, things you don’t need to count	Food you need to keep an eye on: you’ll forget what’s inside
Airtight container (thick glass or plastic with a tight lid)	Flour, sugar, rice, oats, cereal, anything that comes in a thin bag or box	Canned goods and jars (they’re already sealed)
Turntable (lazy susan)	Corners, oils, sauces, spices	Big boxes and bags that slide off
Riser or step shelf	Cans on a shelf where the back row hides	Tight shelves where it just takes up room

Why airtight for the dry goods: NPIC says pantry moth larvae “can chew through plastic bags and thin cardboard, so even unopened packages may become infested,” and recommends storing bulk foods “in thickly walled glass or plastic containers.” If you’ve never had pantry moths, you still don’t need to decant everything. Start with the flour and the grains.

Wood or woven baskets look warm, but you can’t see through them. A label on the front fixes most of that.

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Step 5: Count the bins, then try them for a week

Our counting rule:

• One bin per group that won’t stand up on its own (snack packets, sauce packets, small bags)
• One airtight container per dry good you open and close often
• Nothing for things that already stand neatly (cans on a riser, jars in a row, cereal boxes)

Add it up, then go back to Dana K. White’s rule. The bin decides how much you keep. When the snack bin is full, you don’t buy more snacks yet.

Before you buy anything, try the plan for a week with what you already have: shoeboxes, delivery boxes, a cut-down cereal box. If a box keeps overflowing, that group needs a bigger bin, or fewer things in it. If a box stays half empty, you don’t need a bin there at all. Then buy only the bins the week proved you need, in the sizes you measured.

Label everything

With a label, everyone in the house knows where things go back. Masking tape and a marker work. If you decant flour or rice, write the name on the container, and tape the cooking directions inside the lid if you need them.

Small pantry or a single cabinet

• Fewer, bigger groups. In one cabinet, three or four groups are enough: baking, grains and pasta, snacks, cans.
• The door counts. A slim rack on the back of the door can hold the small packets.
• Go up for backups. The things you use least go on the top shelf, in a basket with a label.
• Clear bins on deep shelves first. If you only buy one kind, buy the kind that lets you see what’s in the back.

Pantry organization with what you already have

Nothing to buy. These are our own suggestions:

• Shoeboxes and delivery boxes as test bins (Step 5)
• A clean glass jar from pasta sauce or pickles for small dry goods
• A tray or baking sheet on a deep shelf, so you pull the whole row forward
• Masking tape and a marker as labels

How to keep it organized

• Five minutes after shopping. New food goes behind the old, in its bin. First in, first out.
• The bin is full, the list is done. Check the bin before you write snacks or pasta on the grocery list.
• One shelf a month. Pull it out, check the cans and the dates, wipe it down. One timer is enough.

Where to go next

Doing the whole kitchen? Start with our home organization ideas, which go spot by spot. For every room, see the decluttering checklist. Short on time? Try the 15-minute declutter. If the pantry feels like too much, read how to declutter when overwhelmed first.

Quick recap

1. Clear one shelf: bulging and damaged cans out, food nobody eats to the give-away box.
2. Group what’s left and put the oldest in front.
3. Measure width, depth and height of each shelf.
4. Clear bins for what you need to see, airtight for flour and grains, baskets for low shelves and backups.
5. Count one bin per group that won’t stand on its own, test with boxes for a week, then buy.

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Sources

• Dana K. White, “Ooooooh. Container. Now I Get It.” A Slob Comes Clean (2010): https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/2010/05/ooooooh-container-now-i-get-it/
• Dana K. White, 5 Steps for Working Through an Overwhelming Mess (PDF), A Slob Comes Clean: https://www.aslobcomesclean.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DASL-5-Steps-to-Working-Through-Mess.pdf
• National Pesticide Information Center, Oregon State University, “Pantry Moths”: https://npic.orst.edu/pest/pantrymoth.html
• Ohio State University Extension, Wayne County, “Points to Ponder While Cleaning out the Pantry” (2016): https://wayne.osu.edu/news/points-ponder-while-cleaning-out-pantry
• Reddit, r/OrganizationPorn, user thread on a deep pantry (2024): https://www.reddit.com/r/OrganizationPorn/comments/1b77d5i/help/