Designing a Kitchen Pantry

Designing a kitchen pantry is one of my favorite topics. I love closet design and closet organization techniques and I love to cook. It is only natural that the combination of closet design in the kitchen would be irresistible to me.

When visiting friends or attending real estate open houses I always make an effort to peak into all of the closets and kitchen pantries that I come across. As an aside, visiting local area real estate open houses is a fantastic way to pick up new design ideas. Whether you are interested in interior design, interior decorating, closet organization, or kitchen pantry design open houses are a wealth of information and ideas. I pay particular attention to the open house ads that boast of complete renovations or completely renovated homes. If the open house ad mentions gourmet kitchen then it is a must see for me. The only downside is that you must undertake a little bit of a charade and pretend you are slightly interested in buying the house or at least interested in buying some sort of new dwelling in the next 12 months.

Getting back to how to design a kitchen pantry, the first thing you must consider are the functional goals of your new kitchen pantry. Are you designing a pantry for the purposes of storing food or unused appliances? This is the most common type of kitchen pantry and adds a great deal of convenience to your kitchen. This type of pantry allows you to see a great deal of items at eye level. As opposed to upper cabinets and lower cabinets, pantries tend to run from the floor to ceiling and permits storage in the thigh to nose range that is by far the most accessible area.

In the event you are designing your kitchen pantry for storage what types of things would you like to store in the pantry. Often people like to use the pantry for excess food items. The pantry provides spill over storage which allows people to stock up on non-perishable items that they might find on sale. If the purpose of the kitchen pantry is to only store food items then you need only be worried about shelving. You can install a number of shelves at different heights depending on the general heights or the cans and bottles etc you tend to buy most often. Remember to leave at least 3 inches of clearance over the stored items between shelves. For example, if you intend to have one shelf of the pantry devoted to cans of soup or stewed tomatoes you should measure the can (generally 5 inches) and add 3 inches. Therefore the next highest shelf should be at least 8 inches higher. You may want to install adjustable shelving in your kitchen pantry. The use of adjustable shelving means that you can be less careful in where you place the individual shelves.

If you have a walk-in kitchen pantry, you might want to consider installing a modular closet organization system. These are the same closet design systems that are used in walk in bedroom closets. You can pick an chose amongst the different components. In the case of a pantry you would want to forgo the hanging rods and add more shelving. Modular closet design systems come in a range of different prices. With a bit of homework you should be able to find one that fits within your budget. You can find different types of modular closet organizations systems at Canadian Tire.

Another type of pantry is called a functional kitchen pantry. Often people ask me about tips on designing and installing a functional kitchen pantry. Other people ask me "What is a functional kitchen pantry". This type of pantry is a pantry in which actually do certain tasks like chopping vegetables or rolling pastry. These pantries become mini work areas. The beauty of these self contained mini work areas is that can be closed off in the event of entertaining or they can be a centralized area to keep baking supplies and to prepare to make bake goods. A lot can be written about this type of pantry so I will save further information for another post.

In conclusion, designing a kitchen pantry is much like any other type of closet organization design. The first step is to determine the main purpose of the pantry or closet. Once you have determined specific goals and identified specific purposes then the design of your closet or kitchen pantry becomes relatively straight forward.

I am attaching a link to a site I find useful when it comes to kitchen pantries .