TikTok Shares A Clever Idea To Organize Your Pantry With Gallon Jars On A Budget

Thanks to the likes of Marie Kondo and professional organizer shows like "The Home Edit," people have taken organizing their pantries to a new level. Gone are the days of cramming your groceries into every available area on the shelf. Instead, the new way of doing things calls for decanting all of your boxed items into matching glass or plastic containers, helping your pantry look more uniform. Decanting helps you get more organized not only because it makes the space appear less chaotic, but it also makes the cabinet or closet look aesthetic. However, as anyone who has tried to decant their ingredients can tell you, those containers can get expensive. Especially if you need larger ones to house things like Costco buys, cereal, or chips. The good news is that you don't have to blow your budget in order to have a nice-looking pantry. Instead, TikTok shares a clever idea on how to organize it with gallon jars.

Large pantry containers can cost upwards of $20 each, which can become pretty pricey if you need more than one. For instance, the 6-quart containers from OXO are recommended for bulk purchases, and they cost $23 for one container. If you need five of those in your pantry, you will be spending over $100. Not everyone wants to decant that badly! But you can still achieve the same look for less with the help of gallon jars. Here's how.

TikToker Mountain Tribe Homestead shows how easily you can organize your pantry with gallon jars. The creator made this a zero-cost project by picking up the jars once a week from a local sandwich shop. Since these establishments need to buy their ingredients in bulk, things like pickles come in large gallon containers. If you don't have a local sandwich place nearby, consider sourcing from a Buy Nothing Facebook group or off of Marketplace. Once you obtain the jars, the video explains that you need to remove the packaging labels with hot water and clean out the jars so that you can remove any food residue and lingering smells.

However, if you can't score free glass jars, you can also purchase them. They will still end up being cheaper than the fancier airtight containers made specifically for pantries. For instance, North Mountain Supply sells a 1-gallon glass jar with a black lid for just $12 on Amazon, making it half the price of the OXO one. And since glass jars usually come with airtight lids, they will work just the same as their specialty counterparts. 

While removing the packaging labels from old jars might be simple enough, getting the pickled smell out of them might not be. If the jars and lids still have a lingering food odor, you can try to remove them with a baking soda paste. This baking soda hack works because the powder is alkaline, and when it mixes with an acidic odor — like pickle brine — a chemical reaction happens that neutralizes it, making it non-volatile, and thus, no smell. However, if a lid got particularly saturated with a brine or oil, the odor might be difficult to lift. In cases like those, you can just buy new lids to replace them. This might also be a good idea if you get a bunch of different jars for free, since it will give them one cohesive look with the same toppers. You can get a 4-inch lid for $5 from Azure.

If you want to make your jars look more store-bought, consider adding labels to note what's being stored in each one. You can easily get an affordable bundle from Amazon. For example, a 400+ piece label set costs $12. This comes with waterproof labels in a clean, minimalist font including everything from different grains to specific spices. If you like a more homey aesthetic, consider the 170-piece set, which costs $10 on Amazon and looks like a person hand-wrote the labels.