February 7, 2017, 3:30 PM ET

It's Time to Organize Your Pantry, and We're Here to Help

Let’s bring some order to your hot mess of a pantry, shall we?

By Courtney Thompson

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Unlike my linen and clothing closets, the pantry is a hub of my home, and its door is opened and closed a hundred times a day. Before having kids, I was probably in and out of there a dozen times daily, but now that I have littles who need snacks and cereal and crackers and fruit pouches, well, let’s just say it’s a high-traffic zone. And trust me when I say, IT’S A MESS. I’ve got bread smushed next to soup cans, snack bars wedged against pasta boxes—and all of this gets uprooted and rearranged by tiny hands again and again throughout the day.

I finally put my foot down last month, and decided I shouldn’t physically cringe every time I open the pantry cabinet. With the help of a few clutch products—the tea organizer, for example, is genius and now my shelves aren’t littered with tattered bags!—I’ve reinvented my pantry and turned into a highly functioning station that the whole family can operate with nary a, “Mooooooom! I need help!”

The dry food dispensers are especially a game changer, because now I can hand my kids a bowl and they self-serve their cereals. (Previously they would precariously carry a bag of Cheerios over to the breakfast table, spilling a few hundred oats along the way.) The spice gripper rows are also life-changing (and time saving!), as before I had all of mine crammed onto one shelf, where I could never clearly see labels and would spend ten minutes trying to find cumin. The point is, you can bring organization—and piece of mind!—to your pantry with just a few affordable items that will leave you wondering how you ever lived without them. As someone who’s a recently-converted neat freak, I promise you the minimal investment is worth every penny.