The Newspaper Hack That Makes Organizing Kitchen Cabinets Much Easier

We're all about low-cost hacks from the pros that make decluttering our pantries and cabinets a breeze. We learned how to organize like Ina Garten and turn all the labels outward, a zero-budget tip that pays dividends. Furthermore, Bobby Flay's kitchen pantry tour was long on sensible tips, like organizing items by cuisine. But having tons of kitchen ingredients and tools and limited space is stressful. In a space like this, knowing how to organize is great, but actually doing it can be a headache due to dimensional constraints.

That's why we love the tip of making patterns of our big containers and appliances with newspapers and using those to painlessly play Tetris with our cabinet and pantry space, all before going through the hassle of actually placing things. Over on Foodie's sister site, Food Republic, a writer spoke exclusively with Evelina Juzėnaitė, Principal Interior Designer at Planner 5D, about this genius strategy. "Using newspaper templates avoids purchasing containers or cans of the wrong size, saves time on measuring and returns, and also helps to visualize how many items can be stored on a shelf or in a drawer," Juzėnaitė explained. 

Gone are the days where you would fruitlessly haul your stand mixer, your massive sack of flour, your slow cooker, and your endless assortment of aesthetically pleasing plastic storage bins from shelf to shelf in search of the perfect fit. Now, you can use your newspaper templates — simply made by tracing the bottom of the items and cutting out the shape — and rearrange them over and over until everything is harmonious.

If you get a daily newspaper, reading it and then recycling it can feel wasteful, even if it's the environmentally correct thing to do. Making newspaper templates not only allows you to experiment with the placement of big items before committing to lugging them into place, but it also allows you to have a portable record of everything in your pantry, which can be invaluable if you are shopping for storage solutions.

Moreover, newspapers are a sensible, low-cost addition to your pantry that you can employ in a variety of ways. Use newspapers to line your shelves and soak up spills or stains before they happen! When neatly cut or folded, this can look just as good as any pricy contact paper that you might purchase, and it's easily replaced if a mess does occur. If you don't have those aforementioned aesthetically pleasing plastic bins (and, to be fair, they can be spendy), you can use ordinary boxes that once held diapers, facial tissues, or any other bulk buy to repurpose as bins ... after wrapping them tidily in newsprint, of course. Just put that gift-wrapping skill of yours to good use and envelop the boxes in newspapers. Voila! You now have uniform, perfectly usable bins that don't cost an arm and a leg. Combined with a shoe hanger in your pantry, you will be the master of budget kitchen storage hacks!

Static Media owns and operates Foodie and Food Republic.