CHRISTMAS IS A time for celebration, and for many, it’s a time to visit with friends and family.

Whether you’re putting up relatives from afar in the spare room this Christmas, or simply expecting a smattering of visitors across the festive season, you never want to be caught off guard.

Naturally, this means making sure your pantry is well-stocked. In fact, it’s quite likely that between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day is the most well-stocked your pantry will be at any point during the year.

In this week’s Taskmaster, we’re looking at steps you can take to keep your pantry organised as you prepare for your Christmas hosting duties. 

Declutter first

As with most important household jobs, the first thing to do is to declutter. No matter who you are, there are almost certainly plenty of items in your presses and pantries that could be done away with. Make sure you also include the fridge and freezer in this clearing out process, because you will certainly need them to supplement the space in your presses over the Christmas season. 

Similarly, you can put away non-perishable goods that won’t get much use over Christmas. If rice and pasta aren’t on the agenda over Christmas week, empty them into clear, labelled Tupperware containers and get them out of the way.

Pantry prioritisation

Your Christmas diet is not the same as your usual diet. Certain staples take a backseat, and certain other food groups come to the fore. As such, the top drawers of your pantry might need a bit of rearranging. 

Since you’re less likely to be cooking family dinners and more likely to be subsisting on leftovers and snacking with visitors, it makes the most sense to rearrange your pantry or the presses where you keep your food so that seasonal food is more ready to hand. 

Baked in

There’s nothing like walking into a home at Christmas and smelling the aroma of freshly baked pastries, cookies or cakes. As such, your pantry should be well stocked with whatever you need to lay out a spread of homemade treats. 

When organising your pantry, make sure you give priority to the essentials: flour, sugar, brown sugar, icing sugar, cocoa powder and baking soda. The last thing you want is to realise on Christmas Eve that you’re missing an essential ingredient of your speciality. One hack to make sure you have all you need is to label each press with the items you’re going to keep there over Christmas, and that way, you’ll be able to check that you have everything before the pivotal moment comes. 

Visibility is key

With people coming in and out of the house and guests potentially staying over, it’s important to have all of the most important foods (cereal, bread for toast and leftover sandwiches) very visible. As such, middle-shelves and eye-level presses should be the spot for all of the most commonly used foods throughout the season. These shelves are also ideal for teabags, coffee, mince pies and other Christmas snacks.