These Ingredient Labels Will Make Your Pantry Look Organized in 5 Minutes

This is Obsessed: my weekly column devoted to sharing all the things I'm loving right now—from unique food and gift ideas to travel destinations and beauty products—plus some tips and tricks for living your best life.

My husband calls our pantry the “danger zone,” because when you open the cabinet doors, things almost always topple over or fall out. This game of Jenga is my own fault; while unpacking groceries or cooking, I’ll haphazardly stack jars of peanut butter, bags of flour and various spices wherever they can fit. But after a jar of sesame oil fell out of the pantry and broke on my floor (glass and slippery oil—what a combo to clean up!), I knew I had to do something about our pantry situation ASAP.

For starters, I removed everything from the pantry and threw away anything past its expiration date. This was a tedious, horrible task and I do not recommend it unless you’ve reached a breaking point like me (or are extremely bored during quarantine). Next, I consolidated all dry ingredients (think: bags of flour, sugar, grains, cereal and dry beans) into these handy OXO Pop Containers ($100 for a set of 10, Amazon). They’re clear plastic, so you can see all of your ingredients at once—plus, they’re airtight, so they keep things nice and fresh.

But the real MVPs of my pantry organization project were these ingredient labels ($15 on Amazon). The set comes with 157 different labels for the most common ingredients found in kitchens (think: flour, pasta, cereal and coffee), but also includes labels for more obscure ingredients like coconut flour and polenta. I also love that they’re written in a cute font and stick on to any plastic or glass container for easy organization.