How to Make Your Pantry Staples Last Longer

Do you like to make sure your pantry is always stocked with the essentials? While having a stocked pantry might put your mind at ease and give you easy access to different ingredients you might commonly use in lots of different recipes. Some of the items in your pantry may go bad a lot sooner than you would like them to. If you want to know how to make your pantry staples last a bit longer, check out the following list of things you need to do. Keep reading to understand how to make your pantry staples last longer. 

Keep Bags Sealed

If you have bags of items, such as flour, pancake mix, and cereal, you should keep those bags sealed, even after you have opened them. If you are going to keep these items in the bags, you should carefully roll the top of the bag down to cover it and then use a chip clip to seal it shut. You might even want to transfer the ingredients into a zipper-sealed bag because then you can remove the air from it.

Use Airtight Food Storage Containers

Rather than leaving some of your pantry staples in the bags and the boxes they come in, you should pour them into airtight food storage containers. These containers will help you save space, but they also keep the air out, which helps to prevent the items from spoiling too soon. If you are blocking extra air from getting in, you can extend the shelf life of your pantry items and preserve their freshness. It is easy to find airtight food storage containers in stores and online on different sites, such as Amazon.

Organize Items From Oldest to Newest

When you purchase items for the pantry, make sure to move your older items up to the front of the pantry while placing the newer items in the back. You want to use what you already have before you start opening new stuff, especially if you want to prevent some of your staples from spoiling. You can add labels to your airtight containers that include the date on them. If you do this, you will know exactly when you opened specific items and exactly when they should start going bad. How do you make your pantry staples last longer?

Check the Shelf Life for Different Products Before You Purchase

It helps to know the shelf life of different products before you even buy them. Some pantry staples naturally last longer than others. For example, brown rice is known to have a shelf life of six months. You can increase the shelf life by an additional six months by placing the brown rice in an airtight container and putting it in the back of your refrigerator. When stored properly, your flour will have a shelf life of around 12 months. Do some research in advance to find out how long specific items should last before you would need to toss them.

If you want to make your pantry staples last a bit longer, follow these helpful tips. It is always good to have the pantry stocked up with essential items that you might end up needing when preparing different meals. These are my tips for how to make pantry staples last longer. What are your tips?