Organization is the key to designing the perfect pantry.  It maximizes storage capacity and increases your efficiency in the kitchen.  It also allows you to take advantage of good sales to ease your budget.

You should be able to see everything you have stored at a glance, when you plan it out carefully.

One wall should hold shallow shelves from top to bottom. This should be for spices and canned goods.

Keep vegetables, fruits, soups, tuna fish, etc. all in those shallow shelves.  Your deeper shelving should be used for packaged goods, cold cereals, pasta, rice, jarred  tall items like condiments, jellies, bottled sauces, syrups, juices, coffee, tea canisters and other beverages.

If you do a lot of baking, those things should have their own wall of shelves.  A good way to set them up is with deep shelves, but shallow ones above them.  That allows you to store large bags of flour, sugar, big boxes of cake mix, corn meal, etc., on the deep shelves, and put things like baking powder, soda, flavorings, cocoa, decorating items etc. on the shelf directly above . It’s not a bad place to store cookbooks either!

Under the deep shelves you can store baskets, bins, a kitchen stool and such. In a deep corner you can use a lazy suzan for things like salad dressings, seasoning packets, and so on.  On the back of your pantry door, hang a hook that you can snap your broom into, for easy access.  Another one for your dust pan and you are all set.