Creating a Pantry

One thing that really irks me about our house is the kitchen. It is woefully small. Ridiculously tiny. Really. In a 1700 square foot home, we have a one-person-only sized kitchen. Here's a good picture to show the size:

As you can see, it is barely wide enough for the oven door to come down. I promise you that two people in my kitchen is a party with one too many people. What also irks me is that there is no pantry. To the right of this picture is one little upper and lower cabinet in which we house drinking glasses and platter sized plates. To the left is the refrigerator. Directly across from the sink is our eat-in nook. So there is no great place for a pantry. Over time, what happened is that we chose one upper cabinet to house all of our dry-goods that do not belong in the fridge. Unfortunately, that led to a bit of over flow.

Over flow

As you can see, there's some bread on the counter, fruit, a bag of coffee, some oils. This is a good day. This was prettied up for the camera. The cabinet itself looks like a disaster zone, and it's hard to find anything. 

However, just off our kitchen we have a good sized mud room with a very large, under used closet. 

Light-bulb! Why not purge out that closet and turn half of it into a pantry? It was full of jackets and coats that I don't wear. Some that maybe I should be wearing and just forget about, and plenty that could just be donated to Goodwill. So, in the space of a nap-time, this became my weekend project. I ordered a garage-storage type shelving unit from Lowe's for $30, and bought some baskets from Wal-mart for about $12. After a couple hours work, here's the finished project:

Isn't it beautiful?! We were already storing extra paper towels, toilet paper, and Kleenex in the closet, but now they are organized and pretty. One of the baskets is even empty! I'm sure it will fill up soon as we get used to working with the pantry a bit more. For now, the top basket has loose odds and ends, small packages of what-not. The full basket on the third shelf contains all matters of liquid sauces and oils that are not used every day. I lined the basket with wax paper to avoid icky messes, just in case. For now, I'm really liking how this turned out. Also, I've gotten a bit of my counter space back.

This may not look quite as organized to you, but it is worlds better than the before picture. I promise!