Pantry Organisation Ideas & Tips: Plastic-Free, Glass Jars
I love staring at organised pantries and so have been meaning to share this post for a while! The other day I cleared out the entire pantry and put everything back in a little more organised + documented the process along the way. If you’re looking for some ideas on how to organise and label your pantry with glass jars, I’m here to share all the details.
I love using glass jars to organise our pantry goods. Aside from it being just damn pretty, having all your items in transparent containers makes it a lot easier to see what you have available and how much of it you have left. It’s great for when you’re shopping at bulk-food stores and you have to bring your own containers. It’s also handy for when you buy items in bulk in general (e.g. via food co-ops or wholesalers) and end up splitting the package with friends & family, leaving you in need of a container to store items in. Lastly, it’s just so much easier to store things when they’re not in floppy packaging.
Wearing: Spell (Mystic Collection)
PANTRY SHELVING
I’m currently storing all my items in our home pantry however our pantry is absolutely tiny in size and so I’m thinking of creating my own free-standing pantry soon for my dried goods soon. I’ve seen many a beautiful pantry created in the IKEA IVAR system which I use a lot around the house and so if you don’t have a built-in pantry or don’t have enough space in your home pantry, you can give this a go! Just make sure that when storing items you keep them behind closed doors away from sunlight, or at least in the shade so that your goods will keep fresh longer.
PANTRY GLASS JAR OPTIONS:
I’ve picked up my glass jars from a few different places:
Ball Mason Jars: my personal favourite kind of glass jars are Ball mason jars. You can buy these in multi-packs (usually 4-pack, 6-pack or 12-pack) online at from Big W. You can also find them in individually in eco-stores as well. These are my most widely used glass jars and where most of my glass jars are from. They are absolutely fantastic and can’t recommend them enough. I actually bought them for my future preserving adventures but I currently use them for many different purposes: in my pantry to store goods (they have a really good seal so you’ll have no problems with ants or food going stale), storing homemade lemonade, as a drinking vessel, storing soup to freeze and more. They also double up as a great measuring device as they are marked with measurements on the side.
IKEA Korken Glass Jars: my flip top glass jars are from IKEA. I have quite a few of these in the larger sizes as I love how reasonably priced they are. They keep things super airtight as well. I use these when I don’t want to buy a whole pack of mason jars as these are cheaper to purchase individually compared to mason jars. However, my only qualm about these jars is that I find them a little difficult to open and close, but maybe that’s just cuz I’m not particularly strong. They are otherwise great jars and would be happy to add more if I ever needed.. and just work on my strength!
Kmart Glass Preserving Jars: the glass jars I’ve picked up from Kmart are similar in look to Ball mason jars. They’re a bargain price too, something like 3 large ones for $6 (example here). However, I have found them not to be airtight or produce a good enough seal for my needs. When I store sugar in them ants can get in if they wanted to even if I close the lid really tight. So I use these for items that don’t require a tight seal or things I’m going to be finishing quite quickly.
Recycled Jars: the most eco-friendly place to find glass jars! I find that pasta sauce, jams and canned olives come in really great sized glass jars and these are the ones I usually wash and peel the label off to re-purpose. Though these days we don’t buy these as much as I tend to make our own pasta sauce and planning to make my own jam too. If you’re having trouble peeling the label off, soak your jar in piping hot water and it should peel off quite easily. You don’t see a lot of these jars in my pantry though (only a few!) as I use these a lot more in my garden (for some reason haha).
LABELLING GLASS JARS
I’ve seen two main methods of labelling glass jars - the first is using a Dymo tapewriter to create those super trendy black labels with white typewriter font. I absolutely love the idea and think they’re gorgeous however making all those labels just look too tedious for me and it felt a little wasteful to create a plastic label which you might have to remove and re-label in the future. Plus the costs of buying more labels & the device itself.
So I prefer to use a white chalk pen instead. It’s super cute and you can write in your own style. A lot of you guys often message asking which one I use - it’s this Uni liquid chalk marker. You can wash the ink off with hot water so that you can re-label as you wish, though I wonder if one day I can find a plant-based ink version of this one day because I’m not sure what it’s made of!
But as you can see, I don’t always label everything. If it’s obvious what it is, I’ll probably leave the jar unlabelled.
PANTRY ORGANISATION TIPS:
Just some final tips that I’ve noted over the years:
When labelling items that have a best before date, you can keep this on hand by either writing the best before date OR date of purchase on the lid or other side of the jar.
When ordering items, group like items together. For example, you can order your shelves like so:
teas and coffees
dried goods used for baking (buckwheat flour, cocoa powder, chia seeds, nuts, etc)
foods for breakfast (e.g. oats, jams, cereal, etc)
carbs (e.g. cous cous, quinoa, pasta, rice, rissoto rice)
herbs, spices & toppings (my curry mixes, star anise, cinnamon sticks, Sichuan pepper, etc which all often fit in smaller jars and so go on the same shelf)
and for me, I usually group my Asian cooking supplies together too! (e.g. shiitake mushrooms, black fungi, anchovies, etc)
I also have a shelf for canned goods from the supermarket (not pictured, but at the very bottom!)
