The kitchen pantry - 5 things your next pantry needs

This is what our pantry looks like now that it is all done. This was one of those projects that was trailing behind the others because we could just close the door.

It's so nice that we can now open it and find whatever we are looking for. Most of the time.

Side bar: After we re-did the entry hall, I moved the giraffe painting over here. You can find pictures of how I painted it in about 8 steps here.

Let's go inside.

As you saw in the last post, we had some shelving put up. Then we had some 1 x 2 put on the face of the shelves to make them look a bit more chunky.

We did a couple of things to optimize our pantry and make it more usable. Here are the top 5 things that I would do over in a heartbeat:

1 - Narrow storage that makes everything easier to find

On the inside left of the pantry we have room for long narrow 8 inch shelves. I love that because nothing gets lost or difficult to find like on a deep shelf.

On the back wall we have 12 inch deep shelves for baskets of stuff and we also have some bamboo boxes for baking items.

Oh and we are fully stocked on B's favorite soda. We call it "apple soda". You might call it apple cider, but then you would think we don't have any soda. We do. We have apple soda.

I love the ingredients in this soda: squeezed apples and carbonation. So wonderful. We still consider it a treat though. We get the little individual bottles at Smart and Final. They are great for birthday parties too.

These are the long narrow shelves that we gained when we pushed out the entry to the pantry and squared of the corner.

On the far wall, we have the deeper storage shelves for baskets and larger things.

I made some new labels for my baskets on Monday. You can see them in the picture below.

I also labeled the bamboo boxes: cake, cutters, candles, confectionery, cupcakes with a label maker. I'm not actually someone who bakes cup cakes, but I am a cup cake liner hoarder on a smallish scale. I just can't pass up a cup cake liner with a cute pattern. It's impossible.

The labels are 1 1/2 inch strips of black cardboard, cut into an arrow shape, punch a hole, poster board Sharpie hand writing, hemp cord, done.

2 - We added outlets in the pantry for small appliances

Inside the pantry we wired for a couple of outlets. One of them is to power the toaster. Our appliance garage in the corner of the kitchen can only hold the blender and our water kettle, so the toaster lives in here. Trying to keep the counters somewhat free of clutter.

Hey, there I am. A toaster self portrait. What, you don't have one?  We drilled a hole through the shelf to feed the cord through to the outlet under it.

3 - A nook that hides brooms behind the door

Behind door number 1 the door is a little inset nook that we made for hanging brooms and such. It started out as one of those compromises that you have to make when building, although this turned out to be a lucky one. The post that is jutting out, creating the inset wall was a very load bearing post. So we thought we would let it stay there for good measure. You know, in the interest of keeping the floors separate and traditional ideas like that. Making it a usable nook was a great bonus.

We put some hooks on the next wall coming around the inside right corner for aprons and bread baskets and the occasional lavender bunch, that I hung there to make it a little prettier for today.

I made those two aprons in 2008. Here are some pictures of me modeling one of them outside our last home.

There is a hidden pocket for ... ? a cork screw maybe. Which brings us to number 4 ...

4 - Wine storage in the darkest corner of the pantry

Then as you come to the end of the tour, there is a section for wine storage. And more bread baskets. But back to the wine storage. I love that we can store some bottles here in the darkest corner of the pantry. It's not for long term storage like you could do with a wine cooler, but it certainly beats storage on the counter top in direct sun light.

Ok, video time. By popular demand (not really. There was one demand. It was popular, though!). Here is a short of the pantry reveal.

If you are on a reader, you may have to click over to the post to view the video

Oh and my favorite part of the pantry:

There is a secret exit?  - No, that's not it...

It's a reverse clown car? - No, that's not it either.

5 - light that turns on automatically when you enter

YES! and it turns itself of after about half a minute.

And it's really easy to do. All you do is that you take out your regular light switch and substitute it with an occupancy sensor like this one.

The only real down side to this is that when we play hide and go seek, B can't hide in there, because the light gives him away. So that is a sacrifice to consider.

That's the pantry.

Let's do a couple before and afters for the road.

Before:

After:

Before

After

Pin this for later?

More kitchen remodel:
You can re-live the whole kichen remodel here, here, here, here, and here.