by Rose Elder
My husband recently wrote an article for melmagazine.com. The article is about how to buy exactly a week worth of groceries. He interviewed a nutritionist and a professional organizer to give the reader information on how to achieve this.
I asked Adam if he could ask the experts for advice on how to avoid wasting food. I recently had found myself buying chia seeds because I wasn’t able to find any in my pantry drawer. I realized, after a full pantry cleanup, that I not only had one bag of chia seeds hiding in there, I had 4! I also found myself frequently throwing away spoiled leftovers from my fridge from who knows when.
Both the professional organizer and the nutritionist kept mentioning to Adam that the key to eating what you already have and subsequently saving money is: “You have to see it.”
It sounds so simple, but is easier said than done. I was determined to organize my pantry and refrigerator in a way that would not only look organized, but that was 100% functional. Last year we remodeled our kitchen with Ikea cabinetry and at that time we only bought a few drawer organizers because we were already maxed out. Ikea has the most amazing accessories to help your kitchen organization go to the next level, so I figured I’d start there.
Sure enough in Ikea’s yearly catalog they had a whole section on how to avoid wasting food. The TILLSLUTA line is their line of dry food jars that they recommend to use with their pantry system. Fortunately for people that don’t have an Ikea kitchen, this system can work with any kitchen.
Then I went to Ikea to purchase the amount of TILLSUTA dry food jars I suspected I needed based on the size of my drawer. I believe I spent around $80 in 14 containers of different sizes, so they are kind of spendy. On the other hand, buying four $6 bags of chia seeds adds up quickly.
I also bought clear tupperwares so I could finally see what leftovers I had in my fridge. I cleaned my fridge completely and got rid of my old tupperwares that were not clear. I opted for Ikea’s PRUTA. 17 tupperwares for $4.99 sounded like a deal to me. Since the tupperwares I was using were not clear, I kept forgetting what was in them, or that they were even there! I have been using this clear tupperwares for about a month now. Since then no leftovers have spoiled on me! The experts were right, if you see it you eat it.
Here are some pictures of my pantry before and after the new system.
Before:
After:
For my kids food pouches I got one of their containers that attaches to the side of the drawer. This ones unfortunately only work for Ikea drawers.
In one of the boxes I added smaller plastic bags because had smaller quantities and I didn’t want to have that many dry jars for such little amounts. But I am able to see what is in that box.
With the TILLSUTA dry jars I was able to also use my pantry drawers to the max. I not only used the width and length of the drawer, but also its height.
I love my P-touch, I use it for most drawer organization. You can go even further by labeling each box, but I decided against it. I sometimes buy something different and I didn’t want to complicate things by adding labels.
This is also an easy way to know if you are running out of anything and needs to be replenished.
How did you choose to organize your pantry?
CALIFORNIA - PERFECT 