How to Stock a Pantry & Fridge (for Cooking from Scratch!)

Here’s how to stock a pantry and refrigerator with simple staples so you have the basic ingredients needed to whip up a meal from scratch. These items serve as the backbone for countless recipes, making cooking from scratch easy, budget-friendly and enjoyable. Minimize those last-minute grocery trips and encourage home-cooked meals with a stocked pantry and refrigerator!

modular mates filled with pantry staples on a shelf

Stock Your Pantry with Staples (so you can cook from scratch at home!)

Are you setting a pantry for the first time? Or maybe you already have a stocked pantry and are interested in ideas to make it better?

I find it so much more fun to bake and cook homemade meals from scratch when I have a well-stocked pantry and refrigerator. So, here’s a simple guide to give you ideas on how to create functional, efficient and inviting food storage space!

Currently as I write this, my pantry is in need of a re-stock. We’re also right at the beginning of canning and freezing season, so soon the lower shelves in the pantry will be filled with canned salsa, pizza sauce, tomato juice, peaches, and pears and the freezer will be filled with frozen corn, green beans, peas and more, Lord willing. For the most part, I enjoy the challenge of keeping the household running smoothly on a budget and that includes all things food and cooking from scratch!

This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through one of our links, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you!

Great Items to Have

Storage containers – air-tight storage containers keep your ingredients fresh and organized. Clear containers in various sizes help to prevent moisture and pests and you can easily see what you have! I have the modular mates from Tupperware. I like them, although they aren’t glass. And, you actually don’t need storage containers; most things are just fine stored in the packages they come in! But they are nice to have.
Labels – it’s nice to have a labeling system of some kind, so you can easily tell the flour from the sugar, and so on. At this point, I literally just use washable markers, so I can easily re-label containers as I change out the ingredients.

picture of my pantry — *A peek inside my pantry. And yes, it’s almost time for a big monthly re-stock!*

List of Pantry & Refrigerator Staples

Common ingredients you’ll find in my pantry:

Flour – wheat berries to grind into flour for baked goods like homemade whole wheat bread and dinner rolls, also a little bit of all-purpose flour for rare occasions when I want it.
Oats – quick oats and sometimes I buy rolled oats
Potatoes – I always have potatoes on hand, whether it’s red, gold or russet potatoes
Pasta – macaroni and spaghetti for sure, then sometimes I’ll get rotini, lasagna, penne, etc. depending on my meal plan.
Rice – white and brown rice
Onions & garlic cloves
Oil – this is an important one. Avocado and olive oil are my two main oils.
Vinegar – regular white vinegar for sure, then sometimes I’ll also get apple cider or balsamic vinegar.
Soy sauce
Worcestershire sauce
Sugar – brown sugar, powdered and white sugar
Cocoa powder
Baking soda
Baking powder
Cornstarch – and similar thickeners like Perma-flo and therm-flo.
Vanilla extract
Yeast
Chocolate chips
Peanut butter
Chia seeds
Nuts – make a great snack as well as ingredients for baking, salads or breakfasts.
Honey
Coffee & tea
Canned beans – always black beans and baked beans, for sure. Over winter, I like to get chili, great northern, kidney and more types of beans for soups!
Canned tomatoes – canned tomato chunks and tomato sauce. I can my own pizza sauce, salsa and tomato juice, so those are also important ingredients in my pantry. One of these years, I’ll grow and can my own tomato chunks, but until then I’ll keep buying the tomato chunks from the store!
Canned fruit

Canned things usually have a long shelf life, so they’re great items to stock up on when they’re on sale!

Condiments – ketchup, several kinds of mustard, mayonnaise, BBQ sauce, and salad dressing.
Crackers
Raisins – and other dried fruit
Tortilla chips – I mostly don’t buy chips any more, except for tortilla chips. They’re very handy to have for dipping!

My spice collection:

Salt & pepper – a common everyday must-have!
Garlic powder
Onion powder
Paprika and chili powder
Dried herbs – oregano, thyme, rosemary, parsley, basil, dill
Cinnamon
Italian seasoning
Taco seasoning

List of items you’ll find in my refrigerator:

Cheese – cheddar cheese, for sure. Then mozzarella and other kinds as needed.
Milk
Eggs
Butter – salted butter is another must-have item.
Sour cream and cream cheese
Maple syrup
Fresh fruit and vegetables – for snacks and meals

What I keep in my freezer:

Homemade chicken bone broth
Berries – strawberries and sometimes blueberries
Meat – any bulk meats like ground beef that we purchased from the local butcher shop or meat deals I got at the grocery store
Vegetables – mainly corn, green beans, and peas.

picture of my freezer — *Eeek! Real life freezer situation around here. My chest freezer is more organized, I promise.*😅

1. Assess Your Cooking Habits & Purchase the Items

What are your must-have ingredients? Chances are, your list would include different things than mine. So use this list just as a basic guide! When I was first setting up my pantry, I definitely didn’t go out and buy all these things but instead built up my pantry over time. Make your list of essentials and start with that. Or, buy everything right up front! However it works best for you.

One way to kind of get an idea what ingredients are important to you, is to look at your favorite recipes and see what they call for. If you’re needing recipe inspiration or meal ideas, check out all these dinner options right here on Small Town Scratch!

And if you do purchase something and don’t end up using it, you’ll know for the next time not to buy it again.

2. Pick the Pantry Location

Take a moment to think about traffic flow in your kitchen and then decide where the best places are for certain ingredients.

Create zones

I like to create zones in my kitchen by keeping all the snacks in a snack drawer, the cooking oils, pastas, rice, salt, pepper and spices near my stovetop, and the baking ingredients all together in a certain area to create a baking station.

For example, store all the baking ingredients in an upper cupboard, set the mixer right below that on the counter-top or in a nearby cupboard, then keep the measuring cups, spatulas, etc. in a drawer just below. When you’re ready to bake, you won’t need to be buzzing around the kitchen collecting everything. It’ll all be within reach (with the exception of any refrigerated stuff).

We have a walk-in pantry, so my mixer, grain mill, measuring cups, and all the baking ingredients are in there. Baking is a whole lot more fun when everything is nearby!

Any remaining ingredients just get stored in the pantry, in labeled containers and somewhat organized by type. Canned items are stored together, and so on.

3. Keeping Inventory and Re-Stocking the Pantry

Alright! Now that your pantry is set up, you’re ready to use it and maintain it!

As you begin using items, you’ll get a good idea how to plan your next shopping list.

We like to do reverse meal planning, (learn more about that here), and to successfully do that we do one large shopping trip a month, then one small local shopping trip a week. The monthly grocery haul is usually at Aldi (and sometimes Wal-Mart) where we re-stock on all the basics. Find our sample pantry re-stock shopping list here! The small shopping trips are usually to the local grocery and/or bulk food stores in the area.

There are always those things that we don’t buy at Aldi (I’m looking at you, wheat berries), so we add them to the weekly shopping list as needed.

Thrive Market is also a good option if you’re looking for cleaner ingredients!

Tips & Tricks for Success!

Buy in bulk. It often doesn’t cost as much money per unit, and canned and dry goods usually keep for a long time, and you can always freeze raw meats for later! You might want to have airtight containers to store the bulk items, though. Oh, and there are certain pantry items we don’t use a lot that I’ll buy in small quantities for the best flavor. (Certain spices, for instance!)
Label your containers. Sometimes I think I’ll just remember stuff, but then I usually end up forgetting. (mom brain?!) Do yourself a favor and label any items you put in a storage container.
Organize. A set of food storage containers goes a long way in helping to stay organized, but baskets, bins and even a lazy susan can be used to group related items together too!
Rotate stock. This takes a little time, but when you come home from a shopping trip, move the old items with closer expiration dates front to be used first and stick the new items in the back. That way you’re using the older stuff up before it expires or goes bad!
Take a quick inventory before grocery shopping. Check your pantry before heading out, just to make sure you don’t need any food items that didn’t make the list!

Tech Tips & Tricks

Keep a running grocery list on your phone. When you notice you’re getting low on something, you can add it to the list right away, before you forget! (Ideally, anyway😅)
Use reminders on your phone to remind yourself before something (like dairy products) goes bad before you get it eaten.