How To Use Dollar Tree's $1.50 Dish Pans For Labeled Storage That Tames Pantry Chaos

Often, the absolute best organizational hacks are the ones that seem almost too simple to work — and that's certainly the case for this one, which has the added benefit of being totally affordable, since all the supplies you need can be found at the aptly-named Dollar Tree. All you'll need is a few of the cheap craft store's white, high-rimmed plastic dish pans (which sell for $1.50 each), and a Sharpie or other tool for labeling them. Then you just have to spend some time in your pantry identifying problem areas (aka spots where snacks are spilling off the shelves), and consolidating similar items into nicely uniform, clearly labeled bins for a sleek storage look with minimal effort.

The idea is versatile, perfect for keeping track of your chaotic kitchen pantry by storing a whole host of items. All 20 bags of half-used grains and pasta? Now easily findable when you're on the hunt for a quick week night dinner, since they're all in one bin. The sauce jars that go with them? Same there. Chips and granola bars or fruit like mandarins, pears, and apples, can all be stored in the same way. This also makes it easy for guests who come over to find a snack for themselves when they're hungry, or, if that's not your vibe, for you to pull out a full bin of specific snacking options to set on the counter for them to sort through and find their pick.

The base concept of this hack is simple, but in our minds, that just means there's lots of space for you to build on it with your own organizational personality. For one thing, you certainly don't have to leave the bins a boring shade of white. Whether you spray paint them to match your pantry shelves, use wallpaper to line the inside with a whimsical pattern, or attach stick-on chalkboard labels and write on them in a fun font, there's no rule that says functional organization has to look plain, so don't limit yourself.

The dish pans have soft plastic sides, so they're not totally stackable, but to save space in your pantry, you could use a metal cooling rack or another shelf divider and stack them that way, placing one bin on top and sliding another underneath. Handles on both sides make the pans easy to pull out when you're grabbing a snack. To use space even more efficiently, you can also use smaller organizing bins within the larger pan, easily separating nut-free snacks from non nut-free ones, keeping small items like candy confined in a Tupperware or screw-top jar, or even dividing the whole container up into small sections to partition off different types of tea bags. After all, square containers take up around 25% less space than round ones (using the latter is one of the worst mistakes you may be making with your pantry space). So making sure your entire pantry has neat parallel lines really is an impressively simple way to give a tiny kitchen more storage space.