KonMari Your Pantry

KonMari Your Pantry

by Bria Brown

via Marie Kondo website

Marie Kondo has taken over the internet, the bookshelves and our homes this past year, but an area that may have been neglected is our pantry. Often times, we overbuy canned food or ingredients that sit until they expire or eventually make our shelves sag under the weight. 

Instead, we can make our pantry a joyous place to see AND we can donate our excess to fight food waste and scarcity!

Here are some quick tips for cleaning out your pantry the KonMari way!

1. Schedule your cleaning

Try to avoid any disturbances during your clean out. This will help you from getting distracted and forgetting to finish your project. Getting pulled out of the pantry while sparking joy could cause you to not return for hours, days, months or never! Schedule your KonMari time so roommates, kids, or pets won't distract you from your mission.

2. Visualize where the food will be going...

The excess ingredients you have could go to a food pantry or food bank in your own city or for locals there are some great resources right here in Oregon. Visualize yourself dropping off the excess food, how good you will feel, and the happiness someone else will experience from having a good meal. Donating to an organization that fights food scarcity is the epitome of sparking joy! 

Donate to PSU Food Pantry

Donate to Oregon Food Bank

3. Sparking Joy

 Marie says to deem whether an item "sparks joy".

In this sense, hold the item and think of the meal you could create with the ingredient. Are you excited to make it? Is it possible to make soon? Would you have to buy a lot more ingredients to make it? Or would it end up sit in your pantry till next Thanksgiving or worse... never?

 If you don't see yourself using the item in the next few weeks, it's probably better to pass on than to hold on. 

4. Tidy by category

Tidying by category ensures that you don't have too many of an item. Have 5 cans of creamed corn? Realistically, how soon would you or your family eat that quantity? Try to keep in mind that after the first or second helping, you may tire out and want to try a different side dish.

What meals have you planned this week? Set these items in close grabbing range and take stock of what is pushed to the side. Are these items necessary? Could they spark more joy in someone else's life? Better to donate the extra cans to that place you're visualizing!

While the pantry can be unsightly place and become a graveyard for ingredients, taking a few steps to organize your shelves could spark joy in your own life and someone else's as well.

By Bria Brown