Home Reno – Pantry Storage

Ok, here we are. This is the big project we did. Big in terms of scale, size, and cost. But worth every penny. This project was inspired in part by the wall of storage you’ve enjoyed since your parents bought that house 30-ish years ago. I’ve been in awe of that much space ever since. It’s been tucked away in my head ever since.

This is my take on it. A full 9′ of storage cabinetry stuffed with pull-out drawers and shelves to spare. We even carved out some space for two appliances: the microwave and the drink fridge. The husband busted his ass planning this all out, buying all of the parts and materials, and assembling it all for me while I was – you guessed it – at work.

My main job was to figure out where the drawers and shelves would reside, and what went in them. After all that, I had to put all of my kitchen crap in these cabinets in a neat, orderly way that is easy to find and not too junky looking. For the most part, things are where they will live forever, but sometimes I will figure out something needs to be moved and just do that on the fly.

This is a small sampling of the crap I had to find a home for. I got rid of a lot of stuff before this picture was taken, too! 😀 So, as you can see, I needed proper storage in this dinky house. This house couldn’t handle my kitchen needs. I have no idea how my neighbours live with their lack of storage, but this is what we did to solve this very vexing and annoying problem.

One other issue we’ve always struggled with is, where do we store our brooms and vacuum? The brooms ended up on a wall in the garage, but the vacuum always kicked about. I hated that, but there was next to zero closet storage on the main floor. Thanks to a weird jog in the wall for the hvac stuff, we had a small nook left over that ended up being the perfect size for our baby Dyson. (We have since replaced it with another thin upright vacuum type that also fits in this nook perfectly.)

And finally, I have to talk about how life-changing pull-out drawers have been for me, a woman with tiny T-Rex arms. We paid a LOT for each of these drawers, but I wouldn’t trade them for all the tea in the Boston harbour. They have made this project complete. I can’t imagine trying to live with these cabinets but with just a bunch of shelves. For real, these were invented for people like me. I cannot recommend them highly enough! 🙂