The Genius Space-Saving Pantry Hack That Keeps Your Chips From Getting Crushed

When it comes to storing food in a small kitchen, chips often get the short end of the stick. Once the bag is open, it's all too easy to shove them into a cabinet only for them to emerge later as a pile of crumbs. Even if you don't have a lot of space to keep your pantry neat and tidy, there is one trick to keeping chips intact between snack sessions: use a pants hanger to hang them up. This little space-saving hack is inexpensive and easy to pull off, it keeps the chips from getting crushed in the pantry or cupboard, and as an added bonus, the hangers act like a chip clip to keep the bag sealed so the chips stay fresh.

You can tackle this hack a couple of different ways, depending on your pantry setup. If you have shelving that's made out of metal wiring, this is as easy as sourcing a few hangers, clipping them to your chip bags, and hanging them on the underside of a pantry shelf. If your shelves or cabinets are solid wood, you'll need some type of hook to hang the hangers.

Command strip hooks work great for this job, especially since bags of chips are not heavy, so the hooks should have no problem sticking. Screw-in mug hooks work well for this hack, too, and you can get a package of them at the hardware store for less than $5. If you're worried about damaging the shelving, you can also get an under-cupboard mug hook like this one from EigPluy, which will slide over the shelf so that the hooks hang underneath the shelf or cabinet where it's installed.

If you don't have any extra pants hangers in your closet and you don't want to buy new ones, you can also pull this hack off with some large binder clips. Check around in your home office space for extra clips, or you can buy them pretty inexpensively at any store that sells office supplies — like this assorted set from DSTELIN. To make the clip work like a hanger, attach it to the bag of chips to close the package, leaving one or both arms on the clip extended — this is the part that you'll attach to the hook on the shelf. If you have wire pantry shelves, hang one or two s-shaped hooks like these hooks from Vafon to your wire shelving, and hook the clipped bags to the underside of your shelf. If you have a solid shelf, attach a sticky hook or screw-in hook and the chip bags will be ready to store.