When kept clean and organized, a pantry can make for quick and easy work in the kitchen. Unfortunately, pantries become dirty and unorganized in a matter of days. As such, they’re not always as beneficial as they could be.

This is why it’s necessary to clean and organized your pantry the right way. But, what is the right way? Take it from a professional house cleaning company: here is how to properly clean and organize your pantry.

Clear the Shelves

You should begin by clearing all of the shelves in your pantry. Only by doing this can you get a fresh start and gain access to all of the potentially dirty areas in the pantry.

Once you’ve removed all of the items from the pantry, wipe them off with a disinfectant wipe or wet paper towel. This will remove residue from the outsides of containers, thus preventing that residue from spreading and attracting pests (like ants and mice).

Get Rid of Unnecessary Items

Next, you’re going to want to get rid of unnecessary items. These include everything from expired foods to foods you didn’t enjoy and the like. If it serves no future purpose, get rid of it.

If you have boxes of foods with only small amounts of food in them, consider dumping their contents in smaller bags so as to condense them. This way, there will be more room in your pantry once it’s time to load things back in.

When disposing of undesirable foods, you have a few options. If you’ve already opened them, you should probably just trash them. If you haven’t opened them, however, you have the option to donate them to food banks and the like.

Scrub the Shelves

Now that you’ve removed items and disposed of undesirable ones, you can start cleaning the pantry itself. Begin by scrubbing the shelves. To do this, you can use a wet paper towel or a sanitary wipe. You should also use an all-purpose cleaner or specialized cleaner.

Spray your cleaner onto the shelf and then use your wipe or paper towel to spread it over the entirety of the shelf. Make sure that you’re pressing down with some force, as you want to remove residue that exists upon the shelf.

Scrub hard until all residue is removed. If a substance is particularly hard to remove, you might have to scrape it up with a spatula or other such substance.

Be sure to clean the undersides of the shelves as well as the tops. These can get all sorts of substances on them over time, and require just as much attention.

Wipe Down the Walls

It’s not just the shelves that are going to be dirty. The walls in your pantry are bound to have residue on them as well. At the very least, they’ll be dusty.

For this reason, you need to wipe them down. You can do so with a disinfectant wipe or a wet paper towel. Include the ceiling while you’re doing this. To reach it, you might need a step ladder.

Clean the Floors

The floors in your pantry are almost sure to be dirty. Whether it’s from crumbs, dirty shoes, or otherwise, they’re going to need quite a bit of attention. As such, vacuuming won’t be enough.

You should start by scraping off hard-to-remove residue. For instance, if a sticky substance fell onto the floor and dried, it’s going to be particularly difficult to remove. You’re going to need to scrape at it with a spatula or scrub at it with a hard-thistle brush.

Once the hard-to-remove residue is removed, you should vacuum the floor. This will ensure that most of the loose debris is picked up. Then, you should use a wet paper towel to clean the dust out of the corners of the baseboards.

Finally, you should wet a mop with soap and water and drag it over the entirety of the floor. This will disinfect the floor and ensure that it’s optimally clean.

Organize Your Food

Now that you have everything clean, you’re going to need to organize your food. This will enable you to locate everything with ease and will also bring a sense of order to your pantry.

There are a number of ways you can go about doing this. You could separate foods by meal (ie. breakfast foods, lunch foods, dinner foods, and snack foods); you could separate foods by packing type (ie. boxes, pouches, cans, etc.); you could even separate them by size. Regardless, there needs to be some kind of rhyme or reason for your organizing.

There are a few strategies to consider when organizing foods. One strategy is to remove dry foods from their packaging and put them in airtight containers instead. This helps protect them from pests and can also help them to last longer.

Another strategy is to keep more frequently-used foods at eye level and to put less frequently-used foods on the top shelves. This way, the more frequently-used foods will be easier to access.

You should also consider putting the biggest items on the floor or low-lying shelves. This way, there’s no risk of them tumbling down on you in the future.

There’s no one-size-fits-all method for organizing a pantry. Do what makes sense to you and utilize some of these strategies, and your pantry should be good to go.

Need a Professional House Cleaning in North Kansas City?

Pantry cleaning isn’t necessarily complicated. However, it can be time-consuming. If you’re looking to save time, you might consider utilizing the services of professional house cleaners.

Need a professional house cleaning in North Kansas City? Look no further than Two Gals and a Broom. We provide a range of cleaning services, from maintenance house cleaning to deluxe house cleaning and more.