Most cooks appreciate every scrap of storage space allotted to their kitchen, big or small, urban or suburban. Some of us let the kitchen spill out into other spaces in the home (remember how David Lebovitz keeps his ice cream maker under the bed?). I recaptured an inefficient coat closet and turned it into a cheery little pantry — one of my all-time most useful kitchen projects! Packing all your kitchen goods together in a pantry like this can really streamline your organizing and post-grocery shopping routine. Here are ten more inspiring examples of pantries, each with a takeaway for small spaces.
Not all of these pantries are tiny, and not all of them are in especially small kitchens. But I chose them because I thought each had something interesting to demonstrate for small kitchens and pantries too.
TOP ROW
• 1 Pantry Reorganization - Eleven Magnolia Lane. There's so much to love about this pantry re-do. It uses a large cupboard as a more organized pantry (a cupboard like this can be inexpensively added to a spare corner, even in a rental). I like how she uses a big basket on the bottom shelf to corral opened bags of chips and crackers.
• 2 Tiny Pantry in DIY Blogger House - The House of Smiths. This is one of my favorite little pantries. What could have been a narrow, inconvenient closet is made into a lovely feature of the kitchen with a glass door, good lighting, and pretty storage containers.
• 3 Perfectly Imperfect Closet Pantry - Perfectly Imperfect. Lots and lots of kitchens (even small ones) have a closet like this nearby. This is a great example of how to organize a closet effectively.
• 4 DIY Canned Storage - Classy Clutter. What an amazing project! This can storage pull-out is built from simple materials and slides into that narrow, otherwise useless space next to the fridge!
• 5 Storage by the Door - Better Homes & Gardens. I like how these shallow shelves fill a wall near a door. Entryways and enclosed lean-to stoops adjacent to the kitchen often have unused wall space that can hold shelves like these.
BOTTOM ROW
• 6 Robin's Egg Pantry Makeover - Cup of Mai. The takeaway from this bright little pantry closet is color! No matter how small your pantry is, you can give it a coat of color. A cheery, pretty color makes the pantry feel more special, makes it more fun to keep organized!
• 7 Glass Door Pantry - Southern Living. A pantry doesn't need to be an eyesore. Here, softly opaque glass doors and lighting inside make this small closet a source of gentle ambient light for the whole kitchen.
• 8 Hallway Pantry - Cote de Texas. This butler's pantry is in a perfectly enormous home, but it is such a smart idea I had to include it. Think about little pass-throughs and small hallways in your home. Is there a spare 6 inches to claim for shallow cabinet, maybe fronted with a skirt like this romantic example?
• 9 Library-Inspired Pantry - via Houzz. OK, this pantry is pretty fabulous (and spacious). The takeaway here (besides, once again, lighting!) is the lovely idea to cram in an extra shelf or two for books, maybe even between the studs.
• 10 Pull-Out Cabinet - Ellentuck Interiors via Houzz. If you don't have a closet to repurpose, make your own pull-out cabinet! The pull-out units in IKEA's AKURUM line are quite reasonably priced. If you nudge your fridge over a foot perhaps you can squeeze one in!
How have you found ways to squeeze in some extra pantry space in your own kitchen?
More Smart Storage: Kitchen Storage Between the Studs: 5 Examples of Smart Recessed Cabinets
(Images: 1. Christy of Eleven Magnolia Lane; 2. Shelley Smith of The House of Smiths; 3. Shaunna of Perfectly Imperfect; 4. Mallory of Classy Clutter; 5. Better Homes & Gardens; 6. Mai of Cup of Mai; 7. Southern Living via The Inspired Room; 8. Cote de Texas; 9. Design Babylon via Houzz; 10. Ellentuck Interiors via Houzz)
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These must all be magazine or catalog pictures ... real people aren't that neat.
And such an abundance of natural light and lovely white paint! My tiny apartment kitchen is like a cave with florescent lighting.
These look lovely and kudos to anyone who can keep a pantry that neat. Maybe it's just me, but I sort of think the purpose of a pantry is to be able to put stuff away and not worry too much about what it looks like on the inside.
Number two doesn't look remotely real to me. Are you really going to haul out that Kitchen Aid mixer every time you need to use it? Those things weigh a ton, which is why most people usually have them out. Also, I don't understand people who just have 6 - 8 spices. I have at least 25.
The very, very best way to keep a pantry organized is to have shelves only as deep as what you regularly store -- ie, 2 inches for spices, 4 inches for canned goods, 6 inches for mason jars, 9 inches for dinner plates. Then shell out for uniform containrs, like mason jars (they come in all sizes).
It enforces discipline. You have to line everything up. There's no option of piling things in and over and behind.
pam h in dc
http://howtorunyourlife.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-design-tiny-kitchen-or-rather.html
I am, Lowter!
...I also have obsessive-compulsive traits, so that explains the pantry...
Terribly excited about our new apartment having a pull-out pantry. It's going to be so TIDY! The one we have at the moment is quite deep, so there's a lot of stuff that gets lost at the back - even after I organised it, the people I'm currently living with are... not, and so things get forgotten.
I'm so envious of these spaces. My "small space pantry" is two rather deep drawers. That's it. No separate closet. I'd like to see an organized pantry drawer.
These spaces don't seem small at all I could probably fit my whole apartment in some of these kitchens.
I'm sorry, but picture 5 - storage by the door... If there's enough space in your pantry to have your mixing bowls side by side on a shelf of their own, rather than stacked inside each other (they're nesting ones... It's kind of in the name) then you have lots of space in your kitchen!
At my old place, our utility room was just off the kitchen and was the brightest room in the house. We installed a french door to bring in more light into the kitchen. Along the back wall, we installed shelves 16 inches deep which gave us something like 60 linear feet of shelving space. It was amazing! I always kept it neat and items faced as it could be seen all the way through the kitchen and from the dining room. It wasn't that difficult to do. Although, that was the one comment we got ALL THE TIME from people looking at it when we sold it. "Now that's just a little bit staged!" But in reality, it was the least staged room in the house.
Oh well.
http://nestingpair.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2009-02-20T16:02:00-08:00&max-results=7
I live in an RV, so I've had to accept that my food gets spread out since I don't have a proper pantry beyond a tiny cupboard that fits canned goods (http://travelswithmiranda.uskeba.ca/?p=723). I keep refining my storage system so that I can know what I have on hand, but it's not an easy pantry with which to make a meal. I'm thinking I might need to keep a master inventory list. I love the idea in the first photo of the chalk board inside the cabinets and may try something like that.
Lowter, my pantry's that neat! Also, it's 3 shelves in a 1920s armoire in our living room, since we have a typical apartment galley kitchen.
@ ECandle96, I keep my KitchenAid mixer on a lower shelf on a baker's rack in my kitchen. I only use it once or twice a month, so it doesn't make sense for it to take up room on my tiny kitchen counters. Yes, it's a pain to haul it out. But a bigger pain to have it taking up so much valuable real estate.
#1 is my old pantry (we've moved since) and while I did stage it for the photos I took for our blog, it actually stayed pretty neat, despite my children's best efforts to destroy it. But, notice that there's another cabinet above with the doors shut--that's where stuff continued to pile in every which way! Thanks so much for the feature.
I redid the pantry in our new house--it's a completely different space but here it is:
http://www.11magnolialane.com/2012/04/19/big-big-news-plus-my-pantry-redo-reveal/