We moved cupboards three times in the last two years — once into a rental, once out of it, once into the flat we're in now. Every move meant starting the pantry from zero, and that turned out to be a useful way to learn what actually belongs on the shelf and what was just clutter from the last kitchen.
The first thing that goes back in is always the boring stuff: rice, a bag of oats, a few tins of beans or sardines, cooking oil. None of it is exciting, but a kitchen without it can't produce a real meal on a Tuesday night. After that comes the flexible layer — pasta, a jar of curry powder, soy sauce, a bottle of chilli sauce — things that turn the boring layer into an actual dinner.
Dried fruit went back on the shelf earlier than I expected, mostly because of how long it lasts through a move. A box of Mazafati dates survived two house moves in a sealed container without going bad, which is more than I can say for the fresh fruit that spoiled in transit both times. They sit next to the nuts, and together they're the thing we reach for when we don't want to cook but don't want packaged snacks either.
The freezer is the part people forget when restocking. Frozen vegetables and a couple of portions of cooked rice or meat, frozen flat in bags, mean there's always a fallback meal even in the first week when the fridge is mostly empty. We learned this the hard way after the second move, when dinner for four days straight was toast.
One thing that changed after three moves: we stopped buying multiples of things we weren't sure we'd finish. A single bag of quinoa sat unopened through two moves before we admitted we don't actually like it and stopped restocking it. The list that works is short — grains, tinned protein, oil, dried fruit, spices we use weekly — and it's easier to pack, unpack, and check at a glance than a cupboard full of ingredients bought for one recipe six months ago.
If you're setting up a kitchen from scratch, check what's already on the shelf at Mazafati before you commit to a big shopping list — dried dates keep for months without refrigeration, which makes them one of the easier things to get right on the first pass.