7 things to declutter from your pantry ASAP

When it comes to keeping your home's most-used zones organized, knowing how to purge is almost as important as knowing how to tidy. These are seven categories that can use a good clean-out in your pantry.

Expired food

Pantries can swallow cans of soup and bags of chips until they're three years expired or stale and soggy. Use organizing your pantry as an audit of sorts — nothing gets placed back in the cabinet or closet until you double-check its expiration date. You may be surprised just how much room you're able to free up.

Unused spices or seasonings

Spices are notoriously hard to keep a handle on, and they add a ton of visual clutter to a space. In general, most dried spices lose their potency after six months, so start by tossing any that have been around a great deal longer than that. Now is the time for some tough love, too — if there are certain blends or spices that you simply never use, consider throwing them out or passing them off to a friend.

Excess bags and totes

We're all for sustainable shopping and reducing our overall waste, but it can sometimes lead to pantry clutter. If you find yourself collecting reusable totes or saving paper grocery bags with the intention of using them again, now is a good time to pare down your collection. Keep just the basics — six sturdy bags is usually sufficient for most households — then devise a good way to store them. The rest can either be recycled or passed off to friends who are also looking to reduce their single-use plastic waste.

Catch-all junk

When looking to purge your pantry and make room for stuff you actually use, the ubiquitous "catch-all junk" category is a great place to focus your attention.

This category can mean different things to different households — for some, it's a slew of mystery tech cables and takeout menus at least a decade old; for others, it's stained dish towels your spouse insists will come in handy at some point. Remove everything from the pantry, sort it into categories, and decide what should stay in your space and what should be trashed.

Any useless organizing solutions

Just because you may already have something in place doesn't mean you have to keep it — in some cases, it may be doing more harm than good (ever try to Tetris teetering bottles of olive oil into a too-small bin?). Take the time to assess which bins, risers, baskets, or shelves are working for you in your pantry and purge accordingly. As you go through, try pairing the storage solution with its intended contents to make sure everything works together and has a plan.

Outdated appliances

If the past few years have found you collecting air fryers or trying out every smoothie blender on the market, chances are your pantry is moonlighting as an appliance graveyard. Countertop appliances add lots of bulk to the pantry and if you aren't using them on the regular, they're not always worth keeping around. If you're unsure which appliances should stay on your roster, spend a few weeks rotating through them and testing each for functionality and ease. Anything that doesn't work qualifies for immediate elimination. Donate or sell duplicate items or those that you aren't totally in love with — you can even put the proceeds towards buying the blender you actually wanted.