I figured with everyone stocking up on food and toilet paper with the COVID-19 madness, a post about how to make the most of your pantry from someone who lives in an RV might be a good idea.

One of the reasons we bought a brand new fifth wheel, only to immediately remodel it to a more Scandinavian style interior is that the floor plan we have isn’t common. The 370RBS’s, (RBS is for Rear Bathroom Suite) more popular cousin is the same floor plan with a 1/2 bath off the kitchen, but instead, we have a pantry/laundry room in that space.

I wouldn’t give up my pantry for the world, but as we are full-timers and we do like to eat well, we’ve expanded shelving to the back wall. I also came to realize how much space is used by packaging designed more for marketing than efficiency and products sold by weight, not volume. To have an organized pantry that makes the most of the room you have can be done in a few steps and involves investing just a 15 minutes a week after grocery shopping.

What will you need?

• Air-tight storage containers of various sizes
• A label maker
• clips and something to hang them on, (couple different scenarios)

The next step is to realize it can be a lot cheaper than most think.

T.J. Maxx and Ross

Storage containers can be expensive, especially the nice ones. The funny thing is, the inventory doesn’t sell too well and often get sent to discount stores like T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, Ross and others. These containers can be picked up for 50-75% off what you’d pay for them at even Target or Walmart. There’s also cheaper, air-tight containers that will work just as well is you’re not going for the “Pinterest” look, but the goal of an effective pantry solution.

Buy various sizes of containers and keep one of each size extra than you think you’ll need. I found that I made use of one, tall spaghetti, a cereal and a few chip size containers, but most of mine are sized to fit 8 oz-16 oz of product. I also use various smaller ones to start downsizing as I shop, making room for new product, while moving product to smaller containers to be finished off.

Label Away

If you’re taking the packaging away, you need to know what’s in each of these containers. Brother makes some really cool label makers and I picked up the P-Touch Cube less than a year ago. It’s Bluetooth-enabled and connects to my phone for the interface. Brother has a couple apps that work with it, including a ton of font and sizing options. I also recommend buying off-brand replacement cartridges to save money- the quality is great and you can get upwards of five cartridges for around $25. Note- as much as I have labeled everything, I’m still on my first cartridge.

Small Out First

Get the spices out of the pantry. If you verify that you haven’t been using the spice or herb, just get rid of it. Really, you won’t miss them, but if it is one you use, it’s most likely 1/2 full and taking up space. A simple magnetic bar and magnetic container system, labeling each container can make efficient extra space in the pantry to be used by other food stuff.

For the actual “containerizing” of your pantry- there are a number of things that are go-tos for containers, most of those that are packed in a way to protect during stocking and which, once opened, can go stale or cake, etc.:

• Any baking products, like flours, sugar, cocoa, sweeteners
• Nuts, cookies, crackers, cake mixes,
• Smaller or odd shaped products like salt, smaller snacks, dog treats,

Start by taking all these items out of your pantry and putting the products into the air-tight containers. I create a long line of labels on one swipe, commonly 5-8 at a time, label the containers and then organize them onto the shelves.

Boxing Day

After the large containers are all in place, choose a shelf for the boxed goods and get them into place. I like to have all my boxed goods together on a higher shelf as we don’t use them as often.

All chips and other bagged items that didn’t go into containers can be clipped and hung from hooked. For some of you, a shower curtain or other pole might work well to hang them from. I have a bottom shelf in my pantry that has all pet care items that is fine to hide.

Once this is complete, I then take all the items I only have small quantity of the product left over, but don’t want to throw away and put them in small, air-tight containers. These can be added at the end of a shelf from the larger ones. Yes, I label these, too. If you don’t label them, they never get eaten, where before, they just were left because they were the remains in a bag, now in the small containers, they look like a real snack. I also get to put the last of baking products and things I use often, like condensed broth packets into something that stacks.

Keeping it Up

Once this is completed, you’ll find you can keep at least twice what you used to store in the same space, which in the COVID-19 times of hoarding, this may or may not be a good thing, but if you can keep an efficient and effective pantry after the pandemic, it will make life easier. Every time we go shopping, I then go through the pantry and move product from larger containers to smaller containers, then take new product and move them into their own containers and label it all. It doesn’t take very long to do and you definitely feel like a more competent adult in these uncertain times.

For me its kind of a necessity- A messy RV pantry is asking for a bigger mess when you arrive somewhere after moving, not counting the extra demands for products on-hand during a pandemic.