To decant or not to decant, that is the question

March 26, 2024 by
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Visit any home organization website, and you will see tips on how to maximize your existing cabinets and shelves by placing your dry goods into neat and tidy clear containers, ideally of the same size and shape. Most of these containers are plastic, so you are basically taking your groceries out of one plastic container and putting them into another for aesthetics and to standardize the size. Is it worth the effort to do this? Eater’s Jaya Saxena shares her emphatic reply: no, it isn’t.

While it might make your kitchen or pantry look like it belongs in a magazine, Saxena says that it’s wasteful because so much plastic (up to 95 percent), ends up in a landfill or incinerated. Even if you use glass containers, you are probably still buying the products in a plastic one that would probably work just as well for storage, even if it doesn’t look as pretty.

Saxena also has thoughts about the reasons influencers give for decanting groceries into their neat little containers. While she begrudgingly allows that the practice makes sense for items like flour and other grains that often don’t come in resealable containers, for the most part she thinks the justifications don’t hold up to scrutiny. “Ensuring that each can in your fridge is fitted into a plastic can dispenser next to your orchid and jar of four carrots is not an exercise in sustainable living or efficient design,” says Saxena. The real reason, obviously, is that it looks nice, not that it’s saving room or keeping things fresher.

I consider myself a half-ass decanter. I have blue vintage canning jars that house various beans, flours, and powders like cornstarch because they don’t come in resealable containers. (Okay, okay, the jars look nice too.) Three Cambro-style containers hold large quantities of flour and sugar. And I have my spices in matching glass jars to make my drawers neat and tidy, so I don’t have to dig through 20 jars to find what I need. But I leave everything else in its original bag, box, or jar. As Saxena says, it takes a lot of time to take everything out of its packaging and put it in another container. While it might look a little nicer to have cereals in matching clear containers, at the end of the day it’s still just shredded wheat and Rice Krispies. And I’m not taking pasta out of the box to put it in a jar, the boxes stack just fine. Where do you land on the decanter spectrum?

Category: Antipasto

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16 Comments

  • KatieK1  on  March 26, 2024

    I have big glass containers for flour and sugar. Otherwise I use take out and yogurt containers for things that need decanting. Bulldog clips are great for keeping top-rolled spice packets closed (including chili powders which stay in the fridge so they don’t get infested). I have learned to keep kosher salt and fine sea salt in lidded jars, which make them more accessible than pouring them out of the containers they come in.

  • janecooksamiracle  on  March 27, 2024

    I have the Tupperware storage solutions for dried foods. Peas, beans, lentils, rice etc.
    All bought in the last century ?

  • lean1  on  March 27, 2024

    spices and rice, beans, and flour go into glass jars or Tupperware. Everything else stays where it is.

  • averythingcooks  on  March 27, 2024

    I am a confirmed decanter for anything in a box or bag. I reuse an endless supply of mason jars/rings & lids that have already been used to water bath can once. I also purchased a little vacuum sealer for mason jars containing dry goods that is getting lots of use. This is not about looks as none of this is stored out in the open in the kitchen. The sad fact is that when you live where I do (a “cottage style” house beside the river in the woods) mice are an inevitable problem…very sad to lift something out of a cupboard or off a shelf (unbelievable where they can get to!) and have everything spill out of a “chew hole”.

  • averythingcooks  on  March 27, 2024

    AND also….I’ve read too many horror stories about pantry moths!

  • cookbookaddict2020  on  March 27, 2024

    I decant flour and sugar, since their original paper packaging invariably makes a mess. And regular salt goes into a mason jar, since the cardboard pour cylinders are impossible to measure from. That’s it. I need to be able to read ingredient lists and know when something was purchased, and my pantry is plenty neat enough as it is.

  • SheilaS  on  March 27, 2024

    Flour and sugars go into plastic containers with scoops so they don’t make a mess. I use Gripstics to re-seal lots of plastic bags, including the zip-top ones that have lost their zip. That lets me keep most stuff in its original packaging.

  • anya_sf  on  March 27, 2024

    Flour, sugar, and most spices (not the ones that come in metal tins). I like cookbookaddict2020’s idea to put salt in a jar for easier measuring.

  • stahl_amy  on  March 27, 2024

    Cambros for all my flours and sugars. Also for grains and beans I buy in bulk. Seeds and dried fruit end up vacusealed and labeled. Everything else is in original containers.

  • LeilaD  on  March 27, 2024

    People DO that?

    *glares accusingly at her spice drawer that was once in alphabetical order but now has the most commonly used spices floating on top of the others

    Waste of time, waste of money, and no one sees my pantry but me.

  • gamulholland  on  March 27, 2024

    When I was fairly newly married and we’d visit my parents for dinner, my mother would always send us home with lots of food she didn’t want…inevitably because it had expired or had pantry moths. (She’s no picnic, so we didn’t protest or there would have been a fuss— we would just take it home and compost it.). Anyway, I’ve been given too many boxes of moth-filled cereal and crackers, with those web-like things, shudder, so I do decant some things: baking stuff like flour and sugar, cereal because our kids always manage to rip the bag and then the cereal gets stale, and lentils and so forth if the container isn’t resealable. And that’s all except for spices: my Christmas gift to my husband one year was putting all the spices in little 5-oz Bormioli Rocco mason jars that you can get as a 6-pack, with labels on top because we keep spices in a drawer. That way he could finally see what was what, and he loves to cook so he was delighted— no more hunting high and low for black peppercorns or whatever. It also prevents the thing that happens where you have, say, 3 jars of cinnamon because you couldn’t find one and bought another one. 🙂

  • GenieB  on  March 27, 2024

    I keep most things in the bag they came in, including flours, since I use a variety of gluten free flours and don’t buy much of anything at once. Bob’s Red Mill (my usual source for flours, and other baking needs) has very secure packaging. I do have some containers that I use for things that spill easily (arrowroot, for example) and beans and lentils. I use the Good Grips brand and have had them for nearly 10 years. All my spices reside on the top shelf of a cart so they are labelled on top. I keep them in alphabetical order so I usually don’t have to hunt for anything.

  • Fyretigger  on  March 28, 2024

    Being done for aesthetics is not ecologically sound. But as long as you don’t have a need to follow each passing design trend, it’s also a one-and-done solution. If you make the choice of glass, then you aren’t adding to the plastics in the world. The article mentions packaging, but there are solutions to that as well. Many stores sell containers that are not further wrapped, and you can use your own bags and boxes to get them home.

    If one remembers the eco-mantra of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle, one can guilt-free decant to their heart’s content. We all get plenty of reusable containers we can repurpose. Pasta sauce jars in particular are highly useful, and several popular brands are compatible with canning jar lids if the original lids go bad. My bulk-bought hibiscus is in a reused protein powder canister, as are various bulk flours and, protein powder too, now purchased in bags.

  • Indio32  on  March 29, 2024

    In this modern world of mostly supermarket packaging it isn’t about protecting or enhancing the food its more about making it more appealing & long lasting for sale. Cheese/fruit/vegetables etc is all wrapped in plastic. Boxes of cereal etc are half empty to give the illusions of value. Childish colours and health claims plastered all over packaging in my mind just makes it look ugly.
    Since now mostly shopping at independents/markets I find my bread comes in a paper bag, the cheese in parchment, milk in glass bottles and fruit and veg in well…. nothing.

  • putcielinky  on  April 5, 2024

    Please be careful with those blue vintage jars! Vintage glass, and particularly colored glass, often has dangerously high levels of lead, cadmium, and sometimes arsenic.

  • Zephyrness  on  April 5, 2024

    Most of my spices get decanted, since I either purchase in bulk or am buying very small amounts in small celophane bags. Anything that happens to come in a pretty jar or tin gets to stay in the pretty jar or tin. Dried chilis also need to go in jars, since the packaging is flimsy. I use small canning jars or reuse jars from purchased foods. Rarely, I buy large quantities of beans and they are in pretty flimsy bags, so they get repackaged. Pasta is no longer a part of our diet (sigh), although I often decanted pastas after I opened the box/bag. The black rice and whole grains that I sometime use get decanted after being opened, just cause its easier for me. My pantry is going to be a mess, what with different sized jars of chili crisp, jams, vegetable pastes, canned fish from all over, little cans of coconut milk and bigger cans of tomatoes. The best I can do is condiments on the top, lentils in the middle, beans on the bottom, spices in the drawer. I don’t want a walk in closet, but I would love a walk in pantry.

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