Kitchen Pantry Ideas and Accessories
The right kitchen pantry ideas and accessories can be as simple or elaborate as you choose to make them. You can use shelves, rollout trays, door swing-out options and basic organization techniques and tricks to allow for easy access.
Many of us have had the experience of looking in our kitchen pantry in the middle of meal preparation to find the one crucial ingredient we forgot and searching in vain for it, because we're sure it's there, but now it is nowhere to be seen and our recipe depends on it. It's too late to run to the store for it, and again, you just know it's in there. Somewhere. If only the pantry wasn't so disorganized.
Kitchen pantries come in many shapes and sizes. From walk-in closets to pullout pantry cabinets to freestanding modular shelves, there are many ways to whip your pantry into shape in just the right size and style for the space you have available.
Walk-in pantries usually contain shallow-based shelves so food items are lined side-by-side and easy to see and access quickly. They also provide plenty of room to store dry goods, canned items, bottles and jars, as well as small appliances. An accessory I love for walk-in pantries is the built-in storage bin with clear facing to store rice, legumes, cereal, pasta and other dry goods, allowing you to consolidate all of those half-opened boxes cluttering your pantry and taking up so much space.
Pullout pantry cabinets are perfect for a small kitchen. You can convert a cabinet or two by adding rolling shelves and wire racks inside the cabinet and doors for a functional cabinet that frees up counter space and keeps you organized. The rollout drawers pull out toward you to allow for plenty of deep storage space. This is extended on a much larger scale with built-in pantry shelving. These modular multiple shelving units combine door racks with shallow shelves and pull out and rotate to reveal more shelves behind them.
Freestanding pantries are really great for a kitchen with tight cabinet space. A freestanding pantry is made of open shelving units fit together to stand free from cabinet furniture, usually against a wall. They allow for storage of pots and pans, as well as dry food items, cans and bottles.
Other pantry ideas and accessories to keep you organized once you've decided on what kind of pantry you want are shelf dividers, pullout drawers, wire baskets for produce, spice racks, see-through containers, and erasable labels to put on the containers for easy identification. With the right pantry, your kitchen will be organized in no time.
