Spring cleaning your kitchen pantry

Spring cleaning your kitchen pantry is another way to help your health and wellbeing! Old food is not good for you and it’s easy to have products stored that you have long forgotten about. 

The first and most important step is to check the date stamp on every product and throw away anything that’s past its ‘use by’ date. The easiest way is to bring everything out of your pantry onto a big table. Be vigorous and check everything. 

Secondly, consider everything that’s left on the table. What do you use, and how often? If you have an overflowing pantry, it may be a good idea to throw out a rare ingredient you bought once a long time ago, for a recipe you’ve never remade. Now, when re-filling your pantry, place the least used items at the back. 

Thirdly, label and date anything that is slightly ambiguous. If you have lots of dry ingredients in opaque boxes, it will help to label these. There’s nothing worse than having to open five boxes to find exactly what you are after!

On this note, it’s important to store nuts and seeds properly. These can go stale very quickly if they are not in a good quality, airtight container. 

Finally, when re-filling the pantry, try to keep like with like. Create a shelf for baking products, one for nuts and seeds, another for canned goods and so on. This makes finding and cooking ingredients much easier. Your pantry will look great too!