Top 10 Ideas for Turning a Kitchen Cabinet into an Efficient Pantry

No pantry? No problem! One upper cabinet, one lower, and one drawer can become an efficient food storage system when you give it the right infrastructure.

Keeping your food storage area organized and tidy takes some effort, but it's worth it. First, you'll be able to see at a glance what you have and when you need to restock, thereby reducing overbuying and waste. Second, cooking dinner goes quicker when you can put your fingers right on what you need quickly. And third, as anybody who has scrolled Instagram for swoon-worthy shelfies can attest, it's a little thrill to open a cupboard to see an orderly tableau of boxes, jars, and cans.

But what if you don't have a walk-in pantry or any pantry at all? What if all you've got to work with is regular kitchen cabinets? Can you still get all your food organized, accessible, and looking tidy? The answer is yes, absolutely. We're going to show you how to turn one upper cabinet, one lower cabinet, and one drawer into an efficient food storage system that'll make your life a little easier.

How to Make Kitchen Cabinets into a Pantry

Step 1: Take stock of your food

Inventory the shelf-stable foods you typically have on hand and group them into categories that make sense to you (snacks, baking, canned goods, etc.). The goal here is to see what and how much you're working with so you can plan optimal storage.

Do you tend to stock a lot of canned goods? Do you own a ton of baking ingredients or not many? Are you using multiple bags of bread, bagels, and English muffins? Taking stock like this will help you determine what kind of storage containers you need as well as where to put the different types of foods. This step rolls up under the mother of all organizing principles: Store like with like.

Related: 13 Items You Should Never Store in the Pantry

Step 2: Give each category of food a home

Determine the optimal location within the cabinet for each category of food based on how often you use it. What you reach for daily should go at eye level in the upper cabinet. (For example, we love breakfast, so we put granola, oatmeal, breads, and spreads together front and center.) What you use only occasionally goes on the highest shelf and/or in the lower cabinet. This is the same principle behind an efficiently organized closet or drawer .

Once you've settled on where each category of food will be located, label the shelf. That way everybody who uses the pantry will know where to look for any given item and, even more importantly, where to put it back.

Related: How to Organize a Pantry into 7 Easy-to-Use and Efficient Zones

Step 3: Plan and add storage infrastructure

Now that you know what is going to be stored where in your cabinets, you can determine the best container, bin, basket , or organizer to put it in. You can also see where you need to subdivide the shelves in order to use them most efficiently. For example, if you have a lot of cans, you might want tiered shelves to stack them on so you can see the ones in the back. If the distance between the shelves is tall enough, you might want to use helper shelves to partition the space. Before you shop, know the purpose and ideal size of each organizer you’re looking for.

Related: The 9 Best Pantry Storage Containers to Organize Your Kitchen

Ideas for storing food in an upper cabinet

Now let's get into the specifics of how to store different kinds of foods in an upper kitchen cabinet. We'll look at the best options for containing and organizing different categories of foods based on their size and shape as well as how often you use them.

Idea 1: Glass Jars

It's hard to beat good old Mason jars for affordable, airtight, nonplastic storage of dry goods. They're a storage classic. But really, any glass jar or container with a tight-fitting lid will work. You could repurpose pickle jars, mayonnaise jars, whatever. The wider the mouth of the jar, the easier it is to use for food storage.

In this cabinet, we used glass jars for all the baking ingredients. They look nice, keep dry goods fresh, and they make it easy to see when you're out of something. And because baking is not something we do every day, we put them on the highest shelf where they are out of the way yet accessible.

Easy Labeling Hack

Did you know you can write directly on a glass jar with a Sharpie and it will come off with soap and water? That makes it really easy to label, and relabel, jars.

Idea 2: Helper Shelves

Subdividing shelves with smaller shelves (aka risers) is a good way to max out the available space in a cabinet. They essentially partition the vertical space into smaller compartments, making it easier to store more and smaller items and still be able to see and grab what you need without the risk of a stack toppling over. For example, we used a helper shelf to store bread and bagels and tucked small bottles and jars below it.

Here's a little optional trick: Matching the helper shelves with the color of the cabinets helps them kind of disappear, which makes the space look even more neat and tidy.

Idea 3: Turntable

A sturdy turntable with high sides is the perfect thing for holding a lot of small-ish, round-ish items so you can see and reach them all. Turntables are versatile, too. They work well for canned goods , spices, jars of nut butters and jellies, and bottles of oils and vinegars. Load the tallest stuff in the center of the turntable and the smaller, lower items around the edge. Another bonus: If that oil or sticky syrup spills, the turntable will keep the mess contained.

Idea 4: Tiered Rack

A tiered storage rack is another way to make sure you can see and reach what's all the way in the back of the cabinet. They come in different sizes and depths and materials, from small plastic ones meant for spices to larger, to more larger, sturdier wooden ones meant for cans. We loaded a tiered rack up with jams, nut butters, syrups, and spreads and located it near the rest of the breakfast foods.

Idea 5: Spice Rack

Before you devote a bunch of pantry or drawer space to storing spices , think about whether a small spice rack stored right on your counter might be sufficient for your needs. It keeps your favorites right out in the open where they're easy to grab and won't get lost in a cabinet or drawer. Plus there are lots of styles of spice racks to choose from, so they can be equal parts handy organizer and decor statement.

Idea 6: Glass Door Coverup

Even if your kitchen cabinets have glass fronts, you can still make them into a pantry. If you want to hide the visual clutter of food packages, make a no-sew curtain out of toweling fabric , which is available in multiple colors and patterns and costs well under $10 per yard. It comes with prefinished edges and in the right widths (usually 16 or 18 inches) to fit a cabinet. That means all you have to do is cut it to length, hem with iron-on seam tape, and attach to them to the cabinet door frame with hook-and-loop tape, creating gentle pleats.

Ideas for storing food in a kitchen drawer

A drawer is a handy spot for all those smaller items that might get lost in a larger cabinet. It's also a good home for bags, packets, and any other odd shape of packaging that won't stand nicely on a shelf. When storing food in a drawer, you can loosen up on the idea of food categories and instead consider the drawer a catch-all for anything that's small and/or awkwardly shaped. But that catch-all needs to be organized, of course.

Idea 7: Silverware Organizer

They're not just for knives and forks. The long, skinny sections of a silverware organizer do a great job of sorting and storing the smallest of the small items. We're talking teabags, individual servings of drink mixes, etc. They also work for "filing" bars and discs of baking chocolate. We positioned the silverware organizer the long way to better fit the drawer and used the space in the front to store bags of rice and masa and tubes of tomato paste.

Idea 8: Baking Pans

You can also outfit a drawer with baking pans to make storage cubbies sized for what you need to store. We used a square cake pan and a loaf pan and loaded it with all our foods in envelopes, packets, and pouches. Experiment with different sizes and shapes of pans to find the right configuration for what you need to store. Just make sure your pans are shallow enough that the drawer can close.

Ideas for storing food in a lower cabinet

Idea 9: Slide-out Shelves

Slide-out shelves are the key to making a lower cabinet work as a pantry. If your lower cabinet already has them, you're in luck. If not, don't worry—it's easier and more affordable than you might think to add pull-outs to your existing cabinets.

Pull-outs come in many sizes, styles, and materials, but in general they run on a track that gets attached to your existing shelf either with screws or a strong adhesive. Models with adjustable width are the most versatile. Label the pull-outs to make it easier to find what you need and return it to its spot after use.

Idea 10: Clear Bins

Rather than just loading a bunch of groceries onto those pull-outs and hoping stuff doesn't roll around when you pull out the shelf, it's a good idea to subdivide the shelf them with clear plastic bins. Clear is crucial here so you can see what you have.

Bins are especially helpful for corralling small cans. We suggest storing cans on their sides rather than stacked, to make it easier grab what you want. Bins are also good for containing awkward or odd-shaped bags of foods, such as pasta and noodles, that are too large for the drawer.

Related: Decanting—Is It Necessary? Tips and Tricks from a Professional Organizer

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