Pantry Panic/Lacklustre Linen
Posted by Lisa Tzuntzurkas on Thursday, April 8, 2010
Pantry Panic and Lacklustre Linen!
Are you frightened to open your linen cupboard door for fear of being drowned by toppling towels and droopy doonas? Flummoxed by the “where is that …” I put in the pantry... questions.
Let me help you get these two areas of your home under control once and for all.
Pantry … We use it every day, we fill it every week; fortnight or month, we have a love/hate relationship with it. It always needs to be bigger and yet even if it was we would still say there was not enough space.
I am a huge advocate for CLEAR plastic containers or glass jars for storing everything from breakfast cereals to flour to pasta – even icing sugars and all spices. Yes it can be a big investment and the question of what to buy can only be answered when you take stock of the products you store in your pantry.
So that would be your first step – take stock – what do you have in your pantry regularly?
Secondly – Ask yourself what sort of pantry you would like to have? The pantry of a chef? The pantry of a mum that likes to make good wholesome meals for her family? The pantry of a lolly factory? A combination of all three?
Designate each shelf with a specific storage purpose. A condiments, coffee, sugar and biscuit shelf, a cooking shelf, place a hanging rack on the inside of the pantry door to store spices on. a cereal and rice shelf and the bottom of the pantry is for storing large containers of flour and all the vegetables that don’t store in the fridge as well as red wine storage. Perfect.
Shelves seem to be stock standard in most houses pantries – however if you have the budget sliding drawers and lazy sussans are great storage solution for smaller pantries – sliding drawers guarantee that the things at the back won’t be forgotten or hard to get to. Lazy sussans are also fantastic for smaller spaces.
Work on a First In First Out basis – so the new stuff you buy is put on the back of the shelf while the older stock is bought forward, this way everything is used before it’s best before date and you are putting money in the bin by food being spoiled before you eat it.
Linen cupboard - My biggest and best tip for storing sheets and blankets is DON’T store them folded in a cupboard – lay your spare blankets and doonas flat between the mattress and base of the bed they belong too. Sheets and pillowcases should be folded and stored on a shelf or in a blanket box in the room to which they belong. Towels should be rolled and kept in a basket in your bathroom. Or if you are lucky enough to have room for a shelving rack in your bathroom rolled on a shelf there.
All of this frees your linen cupboard up to store the important things like photo albums, boxes of keepsakes and heirlooms, board games, those huge serving platters that don’t fit in your kitchen cupboards – have grooves put into your shelf so they can be stood on their sides and take up less room – you can also store seasonal linens and tablecloths in a plastic storage unit in the linen cupboard.
This all has a knock on effect to other areas of your home as well – freeing up space everywhere else.
Are you frightened to open your linen cupboard door for fear of being drowned by toppling towels and droopy doonas? Flummoxed by the “where is that …” I put in the pantry... questions.
Let me help you get these two areas of your home under control once and for all.
Pantry … We use it every day, we fill it every week; fortnight or month, we have a love/hate relationship with it. It always needs to be bigger and yet even if it was we would still say there was not enough space.
I am a huge advocate for CLEAR plastic containers or glass jars for storing everything from breakfast cereals to flour to pasta – even icing sugars and all spices. Yes it can be a big investment and the question of what to buy can only be answered when you take stock of the products you store in your pantry.
So that would be your first step – take stock – what do you have in your pantry regularly?
Secondly – Ask yourself what sort of pantry you would like to have? The pantry of a chef? The pantry of a mum that likes to make good wholesome meals for her family? The pantry of a lolly factory? A combination of all three?
Designate each shelf with a specific storage purpose. A condiments, coffee, sugar and biscuit shelf, a cooking shelf, place a hanging rack on the inside of the pantry door to store spices on. a cereal and rice shelf and the bottom of the pantry is for storing large containers of flour and all the vegetables that don’t store in the fridge as well as red wine storage. Perfect.
Shelves seem to be stock standard in most houses pantries – however if you have the budget sliding drawers and lazy sussans are great storage solution for smaller pantries – sliding drawers guarantee that the things at the back won’t be forgotten or hard to get to. Lazy sussans are also fantastic for smaller spaces.
Work on a First In First Out basis – so the new stuff you buy is put on the back of the shelf while the older stock is bought forward, this way everything is used before it’s best before date and you are putting money in the bin by food being spoiled before you eat it.
Linen cupboard - My biggest and best tip for storing sheets and blankets is DON’T store them folded in a cupboard – lay your spare blankets and doonas flat between the mattress and base of the bed they belong too. Sheets and pillowcases should be folded and stored on a shelf or in a blanket box in the room to which they belong. Towels should be rolled and kept in a basket in your bathroom. Or if you are lucky enough to have room for a shelving rack in your bathroom rolled on a shelf there.
All of this frees your linen cupboard up to store the important things like photo albums, boxes of keepsakes and heirlooms, board games, those huge serving platters that don’t fit in your kitchen cupboards – have grooves put into your shelf so they can be stood on their sides and take up less room – you can also store seasonal linens and tablecloths in a plastic storage unit in the linen cupboard.
This all has a knock on effect to other areas of your home as well – freeing up space everywhere else.
