Organizing Your Pantry the Tetris Way
Rummaging through the pantry doesn't have to be a struggle, so long as you keep Tetris in mind.
A pantry is a great place to store all manner of things, from pots and pans to cereal and spices. At first, everything looks neat, tidy, and welcoming. As the months go by, though, it’s easy to ignore the maintenance required to keep the pantry clean and orderly. Similar to organizing your refrigerator the Tetris way, however, preventing your pantry from becoming a disaster is easy, thanks to the world’s most addictive puzzle game.
First, remove everything from your pantry. This can be a pain, but it allows you to work from a blank slate, similar to an empty Matrix when you begin a new game of Tetris. On top of that, this gives you the chance to check expiration dates and throw away expired food. Furthermore, you should clean the shelves of dust and perhaps mysterious (and gross) substances.
Now that you removed everything, you can begin the process of putting everything back. Think of your pantry like a Tetris Matrix. When it comes time to arrange Tetriminos onto the Matrix, you’ll want to think a few moves ahead, depending on the different shapes you have to work with.
Place items that you use the most in the center within reach, rather than way up at the top. Next, place your large (and often heavy) items down at the bottom of the pantry to form a solid line. Note that you don’t want to extend your bottom line out too far, as you still want room to walk around and slide/shut the door if there is one.
Similar to the different Tetriminos, each of your food items has its own unique shape. To conserve space, you’ll want to group these Tetriminos together. For example, you can stack boxes for things like cereal back-to-back to form a neat line. When doing this, remember to keep the side label facing you in order to quickly find what you need.
The same goes for other items like canned goods. Thankfully you can perfectly stack the cans on top of each other, which makes the cans among the simplest things to put away.
If you have children, put potentially harmful things at the top of the pantry. This may come at the expense of making things fit perfectly, but safety should be the primary concern.
Providing you put a system in place that makes things easy to grab, you should be able to quickly identify the item(s) that you need and then return these things to their original position in the pantry. Similar to Tetris, though, you’ll wind up having to rethink how things fit. But so long as you keep the basic principles of Tetris in mind, your pantry will remain neat and organized.
By saving time and stress thanks to having a clean pantry, you can spend more time relaxing with Tetris for your favorite device.
