Your pantry is the place where you store your food. But it can also be a spot in your home that encourages your kids to get their own snacks rather than ask you to get one for them.
If you're a busy mum wanting to make your kids more independent, if you're looking to be more "mum" and less "maid", the way you set up your home can make a really big difference.
Most pantry organising advice is designed for a household of adults who can read labels, and put things back where they found them. Add an 8 year old into that picture and the system needs to work differently.
To make your life easier, design your pantry around who's actually using it.
Most pantries are organised top to bottom by category - snacks here, tins there, baking supplies up high. That's a perfectly logical system if the only person opening the door is you.
But if you've got kids who are old enough to want a snack and grab it themselves, an adult-logic pantry means one of two things happens. Either everything kid-appropriate is out of reach and you become the designated snack-getter for every single request, or everything is in reach and the pantry becomes a free-for-all the moment your back is turned.
The fix is to give the pantry a "kid zone".
Stop thinking of the pantry as one space and start treating it as two zones stacked on top of each other.
The bottom shelf (or a low drawer, if that's what you've got) becomes the kid zone. This is where anything your children are allowed to get themselves lives. Pouches, crackers, fruit bars, etc. Put them in a bin or basket they can pull out themselves, at a height they can reach without climbing.
Everything above that - the things you want to control the timing or portion of, the baking supplies, the stuff that isn't actually for snacking - goes higher up, out of reach and out of sight lines. If it's not at eye level, it's not front of mind.
And that's it! The system does the boundary-setting for you and encourages self sufficiency.
Kids can easily understand "the basket on the bottom is mine."
And because it's not precious - it's a basket, not a beautifully arranged shelf - it can take being pulled apart and shoved back in by little hands. "Easy to use" matters more than "looks pretty" when you're in the trenches of motherhood.
Want to try it?
Start with the bottom shelf or the lowest, most reachable drawer in your pantry. Clear it out, and fill it with three or four snack options you're happy for your kids to grab without asking. A basket or bin per category works well e.g. one for savoury, one for sweet, one for fruit.
Move anything currently sitting at that height that you don't want them accessing up onto a higher shelf.
Then call it the "kids's shelf" or the "kids drawer" and let them know that's their spot.
Done! Let me know how you go with it.
x Marissa
Marissa Roberts
Organising tips to make life easier for busy mothers
www.beautifullyorganised.com
