It’s Saturday morning. You’re strolling HomeGoods with an Americano in your left hand + trying to maneuver your empty cart with your right.

About 5 aisles in, you spy the PERFECT solution for organizing your {desk/ kitchen cabinet/wherever}. You toss that baby in the cart without hesitation and head for the throw pillows.

A few hours later, you come home and expectantly pull out your treasure. You pop it into place and… it doesn’t fit. <Insert expletive emoji>

Ever happened to you?

It’s happened to me more than once, and I kick myself every time.

Impulse buying has a place {hellooooo candle aisle}. But livin’ on the edge isn’t a good thing when it comes to pantry organization.

If you’ve been following my pantry series, you’ve already done most of the dirty work. Just bear with me for one more step, and we’ll get to the glamorous stuff. Promise.

Create Your Pantry Design Plan

• Pull out a pen and paper and sketch a rough layout of your pantry.
  • Just draw a big rectangle for each wall of your pantry and lines to represent each shelf. Doesn’t have to be to scale. Don’t complicate it!

• Next, grab a measuring tape and note all dimensions of your kitchen pantry on your sketch.
  • This means:
    • Depth of Shelves
    • Width of Shelves
    • Height between each Shelf
  • If your shelves are adjustable, lucky you! Make sure they are at the ideal heights (check out this article for great tips on optimal heights for shelving) before you move on. If not, adjust them now.

• Finally, jot a label for each “zone”. If you’re following my Pantry 101 Series, you should have clarified these in week 2. If not, you can go back and work on that by clicking here.

Your rough pantry plan should look something like this:

TIP: Don’t forget your door when you plan! This is a great place to use wall mounted units or hooks to boost storage potential!

The act of sketching out a pantry design plan may seem tedious, but in my opinion, it is the most important step in achieving your dream pantry in the shortest amount of time. Kind of like the old adage: spend now to save later. Except it’s spend time now to save your sanity later.

That’s it! Wasn’t so bad, was it?

You’ve sketched a pantry design plan {like a pro, I might add}, taken measurements, and defined the function of each zone.

Next week… we shop. It’s going to be hard to wait a week, I know. But you can do this. You can do anything.

xoxo,

PS. If making a plan sounds like torture… let me help ya! I offer DIY Plans for any space in your home, including your pantry!