Shakin & Bakin Foodie Blog

Keeping Your Pantry List in Plain Sight by O Quinn

There is no doubt when it comes to planning meals and putting together your grocery list a pantry list helps a lot! It’s nice to know what you already have on hand so you don’t repeat yourself at the checkout line. How many times have you purchased some pasta, a bottle of ketchup or even a box of salt only to find you had already purchased some the last time there was a sale and put them ever so safely high on the shelf where you promptly forgot they existed?

I love keeping a pantry list not only for the ultra organization factor but also because I can know at a glance how much I have on hand and when I need to stock up again.

The problem can be where to keep such a list. By habit we tend to keep our pantry lists inside of our homemaking planners. That is a good is a good idea because it contains all of our homemaking details. But when you set about to cooking you’re in the kitchen and your homemaking planner isn’t necessarily there too. You might have cloth covered planner that you don’t want to get splatter with the day’s meals. Or maybe your launch pad (to be discussed later) can be found even in another room and that is where you keep your homemaking planner.

I have found that behind the door of said pantry turns out to be the best place to put a kitchen pantry list. I paste a page protector to the back of the door using using one of those 3M removable poster tabs. If you keep kitchen staples in more than one place then a page protector on the back of each door where food items are stored works well. Organize your staples before hand so that each area is a designated spot for certain kinds of foods.

Then I edit my pantry list to show the items I carry on hand at all time. Add what I actually do have on hand in pencil and place it behind the page protector.

When I go to meal plan or make a grocery list I can see at a glance what I have on hand. And know when I see a sale for an item I keep in my kitchen I know whether I need to restock or whether buying more would be too much and a waste of money.

Tools Needed
Pantry List
Page Protector the size of your pantry list
Some sort of tape for poster or light object. 3M makes a good one.

Kemi Quinn is the creator of the Vintage Home Planner on CD 7 volumes of helpful homemaking information and over 170 editable forms and checklists to help you organize your homelife.