The start of our kitchen pantry {closet}
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Our kitchen is the original kitchen from the early 1980’s when my parents bought the house. We have updated the counters, flooring and spruced up the cabinets with a fresh coat of paint over the last 2 years but the size and cabinet space is original providing limited storage space. Behind the closed cabinet doors lies a disaster of piled dishes, pots, pans, a nightmare of mismatched tupperware and boxes of food stacked on top of each other. We decided to empty a small closet off the kitchen and convert it to a kitchen pantry for snacks, assorted pasta, baking items and canned goods.
So here we go, the smallest closet on the planet is about to be converted to a food pantry. Would you believe me if I told you this is the only closet on the entire first floor (the original part of the house) and it use to be the coat closet when I was growing up? Can you imagine this little tiny closet was the only place to hang coats in the house. A couple years ago, prior to blogging, I removed all the coats and added floating shelving. We had no place to store small kitchen appliances so once we added a new coat closet in our finished basement, this tiny closet became prime property in my eyes for kitchen items.
I haven’t quiet figured out how to strategically fit all the food while creating a functional and stylish pantry but this is my current project and where my main focus is as of today.
I have a feeling I need to remove the existing shelves and add more, spacing them closer together. I am hoping that I can get away with just adding to what is already here.
Here is one of our junk food cabinets which is difficult to access as you have to squeeze beside the refrigerator. My hope is that by creating a kitchen pantry, even though it will be small, the food will be accessible and organized.
What a mess! I removed everything over the weekend from the existing closet and now that it’s empty, I can see the potential. The start of our kitchen pantry is underway and hopefully a stylish organized space will emerge soon! My dad saw me removing everything over the weekend and he said, “what are you doing?” I told him I was making a kitchen pantry and his response, “good luck!” He avoids me when I start ripping things apart, he’s afraid to get sucked into a project :). Looking for more organization projects? Check out our newly created craft drawer below.
Meet Jessica
What started as a hobby, Jessica’s blog now has millions of people visit yearly and while many of the projects and posts look and sound perfect, life hasn’t always been easy. Read Jessica’s story and how overcoming death, divorce and dementia was one of her biggest life lessons to date.
Good luck, Jessica! There’s a lot of space in that little cabinet and I bet you’ll make great use of it with some additional shelves. Here are a few ideas that helped me, in case they are useful to you (you help us all the time 🙂 : In my pantry, I use bins, boxes, jars, and lots of the inexpensive little lazy susans from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I also keep heavy, daily-use appliances like my Kitchenaid mixer and coffee maker permanently right on the kitchen counter, because I can’t imagine lugging ’em in and out and I love to cook, and if they are there at hand, I use them more frequently and cook better stuff. I also invented a little “appliance garage” that would be very easy to build when I remodeled–it’s basically a box that sits on the counter with some vertical “drawers” (they’re more like slide-out trays with tall drawer fronts) for the toaster , knife sharpener, etc (and a cubby for the toaster oven, though it is open and doesn’t slide out); the toaster sits on one of those tray/drawers and I can pull it out when I use it, pushing it back into its stylish box when I don’t. It takes up what would otherwise be a dark, “blind spot” corner in the where the counter goes back next to the fridge. These ideas helped maximize my space, good luck with your situation.
Best,
Anne
Thank you so much Anne! I love the idea for the toaster over. We have that same dark space in the corner where our toaster oven lives and that space drives me crazy. I plan on finding a few smaller lazy susans for the shelves, that is a great idea! You are so right about having the smaller appliances (mixers) accessible and using them more often. Thanks for the ideas, I really appreciate them 🙂
So glad it was helpful! I’m not sure I did a very good job of describing the installation–it’s something I designed myself when we built the kitchen, I never saw anything like it in any of my kitchen books or online. But if you can build a box with a couple drawers in it, it would be very easy to make, and it is in exactly the kind of blind corner you have next to your fridge. Just let me know if you would like a photo to see if it would work in your situation and I will send one along.
Best,
Anne
I too have a kitchen pantry dilemma I have been thinking about a lot lately. It’s rather small, but I would love to be able to fit in cleaning supplies as well which seem to be tucked into various closets of the house. Can’t wait to see how yours turns out! 🙂
Thank you Brandi! I can’t wait to see how it turns out either 🙂 hehe
Our pantry is very large, but it’s definitely not organized. I’ve been wanting to make it a little more efficient lately. I’ll add it to the list haha.