Pantry Organization: Storing Many Half-Empty Bags in One Large Container

updated May 3, 2019

Page URL

We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.

Here’s the thing with storing rice and grains: We love the look of vintage glass jars or uniform plastic canisters, but we can’t fit more than a few in our narrow cabinets. Bags smush down more easily and take up less space, but once we open them and use some of the rice (or farro or quinoa), we’re left with a messy pile of rolled-up bags. We came up with a solution that took less than two minutes and made a huge difference. See the full before and after, below.

Here’s what it looked like before. We don’t tend to keep a lot of grains on hand because of our lack of storage. We buy them when we need them, but then we rarely use up an entire bag. Our issue with having separate storage containers for oats, rice, lentils, etc. is that once you use a big scoop, you’re storing a glass or plastic jar that’s taking up the same amount of space but is half-filled with air.

(Image credit: Apartment Therapy)

So we bought two rectangular Click-Clack containers from The Container Store that could hold all of those little bags and keep the cabinet more organized. Obviously the larger, just-purchased bags won’t fit, but we hope to use up the little bits of grains and rice enough that we can rotate things in and out.