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Some Very Excellent Pantry Storage Ideas, From Some of Your Favorite Serious Eats Staffers

Grab those random bags of beans and boxes of baking soda and gather ‘round.

By
Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm
Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm Serious Eats
Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm
Associate Editorial Director
Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm is the Associate Editorial Director for Serious Eats. She joined the team in 2021.
Learn about Serious Eats' Editorial Process
Published March 08, 2024
Plastic box filled with containers of non-perishable Japanese pantry ingredients

Serious Eats / Sasha Marx

Pantry storage! It’s a pain! Who wants to fiddle with where to fit a bag of flour when there are chicken cutlets to shallow-fry, cookies to bake, or a sauce to make? However, a well-organized pantry will make you feel better (dare we say fresher) and certainly like a more efficient cook or baker. Imagine being able to find what you need in a snap or say hello to containers and goodbye to bags of sugar and flour that never actually reseal. Miracles! They happen. 

Here are a handful of pantry storage ideas from Serious Eats staffers. The below products might not be flashy, but they are highly functional. 

I've been getting a lot of mileage out of Container Store plastic boxes in a variety of sizes, which are perfect for organizing related pantry items into groups (some of mine: Chinese ingredients; grains and legumes; dried chile peppers; Japanese ingredients; baking pantry). I've also found reusable silicone bags to be helpful in capturing odds and ends that are no longer in their original packaging, like a half-finished bag of nuts, some loose crackers, or a stash of tea bags. — Daniel Gritzer, senior culinary director

Plastic box filled with bags of dried beans and legumes

Serious Eats / Sasha Marx

I'm a big fan of OXO's Pop containers (ya know, the ones with the buttons on the lids), but they're expensive and thus I've slowly accumulated them. My favorite ones (and our top picks), though, are the giant containers meant to house vats of sugar, flour, rolled oats, and the like. They even have scoops that affix underneath their lids. I also have some of these smaller containers that I use to store various sugars and pantry goods. For brown sugar, I highly recommend this little orb that you soak in water and affix to the underside of the OXO’s lid. It works exceptionally well at keeping brown sugar soft and stays out of the way for scooping. — Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm, senior commerce editor

three oxo food containers on a gray backdrop

Serious Eats / Grace Kelly

Every spice deserves a little love, but if I can't see it on my spice rack or in my pantry, then it will probably be forgotten and go unused. I (attempt) to avoid this by adding big labels to all my spices and making sure they are clearly visible when I tuck them away into my spice drawer. I'll also join in the symphony of praises for clear, large stackable containers for bulk items like assorted flours, sugars, and grains. I also rely on clear quart and pint-sized deli containers for dry good storage (rice, beans, bulk spices, salt). — Leah Colins, senior culinary editor

My pantry organizational skills are nearly nonexistent; I am the person who opens a cupboard and is greeted by a torrential downpour of mismatched food storage containers, lids scattering across the floor like grains of rice. Organization? What does that mean? That said, the one area I seem capable of containing my entropy is with dry goods like flour, sugar, and salt. Each gets their own container, with the sugar finding a home in a Le Creuset Storage Canister, salt in a flip-top cellar, and flour in the massive décor Tellfresh Superstorer. Rice is another lucky ingredient and lives in these glass Guzzini Grigio containers on my countertop. — Grace Kelly, associate commerce editor

two dry food storage containers with rice inside them

Serious Eats / Grace Kelly

I label everything with green tape and a Sharpie so things don't get lost in the ether, and stick to square and rectangular containers as much as possible. It's hard to squeeze in round containers! I use an assortment of Cambros, Mepal modula containers, and Rubbermaid Brilliance containers (our favorite food storage containers). They all have one thing in common: they're clear, stackable, and easy to wash and clean. — Genevieve Yam, culinary editor

Four small plastic deli containers with blue tape labels on them.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

My pantry is small (literally a closet we put shelves in). I have to maximize the space I have. I recently purchased a utility cart, where I've taken to storing overflow or particularly bulky goods that eat up a lot of shelf space, like extra bags of flour. I like that I can roll the cart into and out of my pantry (ahem, closet) if I need to search for things on the bottom shelves. — Riddley

I will admit that I bought this baking storage set after seeing a TikTok video about it, but they have lived up to the hype. The containers are perfectly sized to fit their intended contents (meaning I can just dump a bag of flour or sugar inside with no leftovers), and the measurement markings allow me to easily see how much I have left. There are also handy magnetized or tucked-away accessories like an ingredient leveler for the flour, a shaker for the powdered sugar, and a terracotta disk for the brown sugar.

My spices are so much easier to store and find now that I invested in a tiered rack for my cupboard. I picked this one because the steps are large enough to hold smaller bottles of oil and vinegar, and the lips prevent the bottles and jars from falling down and shattering on the kitchen floor. — Taysha Murtaugh, commerce director

It's just so satisfying to have everything labeled—OXO containers, shelves, spices, organizing bins. Not only does it look nice and allow me to mindlessly know where things go, but in a house with two teens and a husband, it means everyone knows what goes where. — Michelle Edelbaum, SVP/GM

FAQs

How do I add space to my pantry? 

Adding stackable bins makes use of the (often unused) vertical space in your pantry. We’ve long recommended inexpensive ones like these. 

What are some cheap pantry storage ideas?

There are plenty of inexpensive containers out there that will make your pantry feel more organized and easier to navigate. Take, for example, this nine-piece set or these $4 stackable bins.

Why We’re the Experts

  • Riddley Gemperlein-Schirm is the senior commerce editor at Serious Eats. 
  • Riddley's been working for the site since 2021 and has reviewed equipment professionally for about six years.
  • She wrote our reviews of air fryers and dinnerware sets, among others. 

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