To Decant Or Not To Decant?
EPISODE 22
by Dianne Jimenez
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To Decant Or Not To Decant?
So if you still have to go out and get something for these amazing teachers and staff, I’m right there with you friend!
So the idea to talk about the topic of decanting food came up as I was organizing a client’s pantry. I asked him if he ever considered decanting certain food items and he wasn’t sure what that meant or what it entailed. So that got me thinking. This would be a GREAT topic to talk about on my podcast: Decanting
Well I’m about to tell you all that in today’s episode. But before I do, don’t forget to hit subscribe and follow on my podcast show from whichever platform you’re listening from right now. If you don’t want to miss when the next one releases, just head to DianneJimenez.com and click on the words “Be the First to know”. You can’t miss it. It drops down right underneath the fuchsia media player.
Alright back to our topic! Decanting: What is it? How do you do this? And Who should decant?
You’re about to find out here. Are you ready? Let’s go!
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What is Decanting?
The true meaning of decanting is to pour out a liquid, usually wine, from its container into a larger vessel, to allow the wine to breathe. Now for the home organizing space, decanting goes BEYOND wine. It’s technically the same idea, pouring contents into another vessel but the one doing the breathing – or has the impression of feeling like they can breathe, is us, the homeowner!
If you google ‘kitchen organization’ or ‘pantry organizing’ you’ll see thousands upon thousands of images where the spaces are organized using matching jars, containers, baskets, etc. to make it all look ‘put together’, neat and pretty. It’s what’s IN and people are loving it, inspired by these store-like appearances is getting people to taking action on their own spaces! It’s pretty awesome!
Hands down, a uniformed look inside a pantry, closet, shelf, drawer , is beautiful and interesting. Your eyes go from one white space to the next and everything matches. There’s no clutter and for some reason, the closed containers and the labels just entices you even more to take a peek and EVEN, motivates you to use that space! THAT’s what makes it so appealing to do. The brain has less to process so that’s ALWAYS a bonus.
On top of this, it’s as though you have more space, more breathing room now because of the organizing systems and solutions used. And the pretty colors or neutral tones, mix of textures and strategic use of white space really adds, makes the space feel light and airy. Hence the feeling like you can breathe!
You’ll know what I’m talking about when you see the images on Pinterest and MAYBE use them as inspiration.
So back to decanting. As mentioned before, when you DO decant, you pour out food items from their original box or container and pour them into other matching containers, right? So typical containers are glass, plastic, and ceramic. The 2 main reasons are both space saving and aesthetics. Now I’ve already explained the reason people decant for aesthetic purposes, but when it comes to space saving, big and bulky is just challenging to manipulate and takes up more space for the amount of time you use it.
For instance, manipulating a bag of flour that’s 5 kgs vs decanting the flour into something smaller is far more manageable. It just makes sense!
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Or things that come in bags, cylindrical or just odd shape containers and pouring into a square base container allows you to maximize the surface area of the shelf, drawer or cabinet. Small things do add up when you look at the big picture.
Typical examples for decanting are dry goods such as spices, flour, like I mentioned, rice, sugar, cereal, legumes, pasta, etc. We’ve seen these everywhere from Pinterest to even the actual aisles at Walmart and the Dollar Store with their different suggested food storage containers they offer. Non-food item examples are things like dishwasher soap pods, Q-tips and the makeup removing pads you can house in clear plastic containers vs the original bulky, wobbly, plastic containers and bags these things normally come in.
Decanting items can be limitless! Your lifestyle and budget cap all of that up. Which brings me to….
HOW to decant your items?
And I’m going to give you the skinny on the typical rules to follow
- The first thing you have to decide before the HOW to decant is, WHAT exactly are you decanting?
- Now if you were paying attention to some of the examples I’ve mentioned before or have an idea about it, then you know what I’m talking about.
- Normally, you would decant things that you use a lot of or items you buy in bulk. Now, this doesn’t mean that you use these items every, single day but often enough. These would be called your STAPLE items.
- One way of figuring out if an item is a staple item is asking yourself this: When the item runs out or there’s none left, do you go out and buy the same exact thing again and again? If you answered ‘yes’ to this, then that’s considered a staple item.
- After choosing your container, wash and dry them properly – especially if they will be storing food items
- Write the date.
- when it was decanted and the expiry dates from original box.
- This one is super important to avoid waste, follow the FIFO rule. That’s ‘First in, First Out’.
- In order to do this is before you refill a nearly empty container, empty the remnants – or old food items or products – into a bowl. Refill your now empty container with the new and then top it off with the old.
- It’s normal for the decanter to not fit ALL the items. That’s OK. Stock up your decanter and keep overstock with your other overstock items.
- That would be in another area of your house or in a space that’s less accessible but can hold your bulkier item. We keep most of our dry goods on a shelf in our garage. Some people have a second closet to house their things and ONLY have the used items in their pantry or main areas.
- And the last thing is, and I read this somewhere, that it’s a good idea to shake things up from time to time, to make things look and taste fresh.
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The worst thing is when you’re ready to use the food item, let’s say, and it’s stuck or glued to the bottom and sides of the container. Ah I hate that! Or even worse, that things are hard as cement. They move around inside the container but it’s all just stuck together in 1 huge clump and too big to even come out! This could have to do with moisture leaving your container and you need to get a better sealing one.
This used to happen to us for brown sugar. We used this ceramic or terra cotta disc that was said to retain the moisture so as to keep the brown sugar from hardening, but it never worked for us. So we found a solution by fluke. The only thing, though, is that the look isn’t quite sexy. So you know how brown sugar comes in a bag, right? Well after we open the bag, we roll up the open end or clip it and put the whole bag in a large Ziploc. Then we would put that inside a plastic food container. The results? No clumps, hardening or anything even after a few months!
Ok so I talked about food. The same rings true for non-food items, like bathroom or laundry room products.
If you want to maintain the Zen feel of a bathroom, for instance, you can decant your favorite shampoo, conditioner and lotions into matching bottles so as to streamline the overall look here and reduce the visual clutter of multiple bottles in different shapes and colors in your washroom.
When it comes to other parts of the house, such as the laundry room, it’s the same principle. On top of beautifying the place – especially when it comes to laundry, you need all the motivation you can get! So why not make the space inviting to be there? So reducing the bulky detergents and giant box of pods, decanting into cute smaller containers also makes things more accessible and easy to function in this space.
I don’t need to convince you that having things readily available, to a certain extent, saves you time and energy. I actually show you a breakdown on the number of movements being done just by grabbing a Tide Pod to do laundry; how many you do when you haven’t decanted vs when you do. If you want to check it out, it’s in the “Repurposing” portion of podcast episode #15. I’ll link it in the show notes or, you can head to DianneJimenez.com/podcast15 – all in 1 word to see what I’m talking about. The difference is pretty shocking!
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Ok let’s keep moving on! We talked about the What, the How and now comes the WHO – again, not the rock band (laughs)
Who should decant?
Remember when I mentioned earlier that what you decant can be limitless and the only things stopping you…or what limits you are your lifestyle and budget. When it comes to WHO should decant, or is decanting for you, this is where I get down to the nitty gritty:
Decanting requires observation and maintenance if you want to keep up with the look and ease of functioning of your space. Depending on the items you’ve decanted and the container you’ve chosen, it could mean very little maintenance, or A LOT. This alone could deter someone from even attempting to incorporate this whole thing into their daily life.
But don’t fret. Let me clarify: For items that are frequently being used, these will require multiple refills and maintenance – that’s the bad news. The quick fix or temporary solution for this is delegating the tasks of replenishing the snacks, for example, to the kids!
But not all tasks are kid friendly so the ultimate solution to reducing the amount of refilling we have to do is through trial and error of different organizing solutions and time.
I know, not fun but here’s where your observation skills come in. Really observe the way your family moves in the space that you’re aiming to spruce up and see their behaviors and habits around that area:
- Is it a crowded zone that gets a lot of action?
- Are items constantly being turned over? Or,
- is the product shape, size and form a constant at your place?
An example of this is pasta. There are so many varieties. Which ones do you consume on a regular basis? You know the bulky bags or half-used bags are kind of an eyesore. Imagine how much more of an eyesore when you have several half-used bags of pasta in the pantry. All that vertical space being wasted, not to mention shelf space!
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So that’s why containing it in a rigid container keeps everything nice and tight and streamlined. Choosing the appropriate container size for your space is crucial. Here’s an example at our house and MANY houses I’ve organized:
Snacks are often stored in a drawer or cabinet, right? When they are inside the unit, how are they being stored? Now depending on HOW you organize your cabinet or snack drawer, it can look really nice and neat or a complete disaster from 1 day to the next. There’s A LOT of maintenance and replenishing going on for this category especially if you have kids or have constant snackers in the house. Prepare to maintain this space at LEAST once a week for both the actual place where you keep the snacks AND the overstock.
So a few years ago when I just wanted to contain our snack drawer chaos, I used what we had available here which was a clear plastic shoe box. Even if it was slightly tapered at the bottom, it still worked. Not the best solution but it let me see how this space was being used, how messy looking it got – which was less now that there was a structure implemented. And how easy it was to grab & go and replenish. The idea of an open, rigid container was in the right direction. The way it fit, though, the other boxed items and bagged snacks wasn’t ideal at all.
Over some time, I tried changing directions for the shoe box, but it wasn’t quite the look I was looking for. This is where time, trial and error all come in.
When Costco finally had the containers from iDesign that were slightly smaller, more rigid and didn’t taper at the bottom, I went ahead and got them. Now they’re a little more expensive than the plastic show box from the dollar store, but they answered my needs, plus I was able to fit more than 1 container inside the drawer to create even more structure. Now things weren’t toppling over each other and kept everything nice and neat.
If you want to check it out, I created a before and after video so that you can see the transformation. I’ll link that in the show notes as well.
So if you’re just starting out with decanting, a good rule of thumb is to decant staple items. In other words, food and non food items that you always use.
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If you’re past this point and want to make it look like those picture perfect images on Pinterest, start slowly. Observe. See how you and your family LIVE around the new system and use what they already have OR get something inexpensive to test out over time. Then ask yourself:
- Does decanting the product make things a little easier or ADDS to your pile of things to maintain?
An example of this is when I decided to decant our kids’ shampoo and conditioner. There were 2 problems here: The pump I got wasn’t the best or most sturdy one, so whenever they would press down on an almost empty pump, the thing would fly off. And number 2, because of the size I got, pouring from the bigger jug into the smaller one took forever! Conditioner moves like molasses when the path is too narrow folks! You’ve been warned (laughs).
Anyway, after a few refills I scrapped the whole system and kept them in their original bottles…for now, until I find a better type of pump because my ultimate goal is to keep the shower area looking less cluttered and easier to clean.
Alright my friend, there you have it, Decanting: What is it, How do you start and who should get into it?
Thank you so much for being so awesome for tuning in. Please share the link of this episode with a friend who’s trying to get their home organized. You never know if this is exactly the direction and clarity they’ve been looking for – and you just listened to it here! So text them the link ok? I’d be forever grateful.
My mission is to help as many parents out there with organizing their life and home, all while balancing the parenting-life journey. So you never know what positive changes you’re helping to make in their lives too!
Ok here’s my action step for you:
- Find an item in your home that’s still in its original box or container.
- Ask yourself: Would decanting this item make things easier for you and your family?
- Post a pic of that item and tag me on FB or Instagram @1tidyplace. I want to cheer you on in your organizing journey
Alright! That’s it for me, I’ll see you back here next week friend. Bye bye!
Referenced in this episode
- Roadmap
- Tag your next item to decant on Facebook or Instagram
- Podcast episode #15
- iDesign containers – not an affiliate
- Snack drawer before and after – on TikTok, on Instagram
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