Food containers are quite useful. They help you keep stuff organized. For any food item you want to store – whether in your pantry or cabinet or fridge, you can find just the right kind of container. However, just like everything else which is great in utility but troublesome when in huge quantity, unchecked purchases and unorganized placement of food containers can create havoc in all your storage places.

After shifting to US, over a period of time, we had bought approx 50 containers. Half of these are always in use and have fixed location. The other half, we purchased when we got a lot of snacks from India. Over a period of few months, the snacks rested snugly in our increased & satisfied belly and the food containers, now empty, had no place to go.

Since containers are still used in a on-off basis to store items, we can’t put them away. They need to be accessible. However, since they are used to store items temporarily, they really don’t have a place of their own. And when something doesn’t have a place of it’s own, it always finds a way to create clutter and trouble. If the moment you open your cabinet, a container or lid tumbles down OR you find your containers everywhere – over crowding limited space that you have OR you don’t find the container that you want easily, you know what trouble I am talking about.

I started to experiment ways in which I could organize these empty food boxes. Here is what I tried and how it worked out -

My Experiments With Organizing Empty Food Containers -

• Place containers along with their lids stacked up in pantry (that’s two long open shelves in our case).
  

  Bad idea! over a period of time, we found containers taking over entire pantry. Because our pantry doesn’t have any kind of dividers and containers aren’t necessarily kept in the same order always, we conveniently started putting containers wherever space was available. And soon, it looked as if our pantry had just one purpose, storing empty food containers!

  This of course led to other problems as well – we had to create space everytime we wanted to place some new item in the pantry – which means lot of reshuffling of containers to make space.

  The only good part was that we could get any container we wanted with it’s lid easily.

• The next idea – to nest containers in each other and store lids separately

  The pressing issue of containers taking over entire pantry got solved. We grouped containers based on their shapes and brands. Stacked similar items together and kept lids separately. This reduced amount of space these containers needed.

  However, finding the right lid became a time consuming process. Since we have boxes from multiple brands – Rubber maid, Tupperware and Main Stay, and we got boxes in multiple sizes, finding the right lid meant figuring out right brand and right size.

  A lot of people recommend sticking to one brand and one shape per size to avoid such confusion. But then, we had already purchased containers so too late.

  An additional problem – since nested containers were stacked, sometimes stacking got uneven and everything tumbled out. Plus, time required to get one right container increased. Find the right container, and keep rest of stacked containers back, find the right lid, keep the rest back in place … it was easier to just keep everything out than keeping them back in their right place.

  And because it was easier to keep everything out or just dump, over a period of time, half containers got stacked and half spread over the entire pantry. And yes, they did begin taking over entire pantry space again.

• To solve the problem of containers taking over entire pantry, I started keeping containers stacked in a huge and deep cardboard box.

  I nested containers and stacked them over each other in the cardboard box and kept lids on the side. This really helped. Creating boundaries for containers helped keeping them within them and not take over entire space. In addition to that, the containers that I used regularly got on top of the pile and the rest remained at the bottom of the box. Searching for lids was still a problem.

  Only problem with this was that to get a container from bottom, I had to remove all containers and sometimes re-arrange them. And yes, if the lid somehow had found it’s way to the bottom, then searching for it became trouble some as well.

• I then decided to move all containers to a cabinet

  The two shelf cabinet was an answer to all my organizing problems. I divided containers in two categories – those used more frequently and those used less frequently. The top shelf got all containers used less frequently and the bottom one got more frequently used containers. Same brand – same size nested together and kept with their lids on top or bottom whichever worked.

  I also have a set of disposable containers which I think I might not use but would like to keep for just-in-case scenarios. These are all nested together and kept away in a place which is rarely used. If I don’t use these containers for another year, then they will get dumped.

Do you have any difficulty organizing your empty food containers?

Here are something pointers which might be helpful -
• Dump containers which you are not going to use and those which don’t have matching lid or container
• Divide your containers in two sets – those frequently used and those rarely used and fix locations for both categories
• Closed places work better than open ones
• Keep containers in such a way that all of them are visible and easily accessible.
• Keep containers nested so that they take less space
• Keep lids along with containers so that you don’t have to search for them

What tips can you offer to organize empty food containers?

photo : syntopia