How Pantry Designs Can Improve Your Small Kitchen Remodel

A pantry can help  with your small kitchen remodel even though you may think pantries are only for people with lots of space. How can this be?

Well, there are several ways this can happen:

• A pantry saves on the need for cabinets in the main kitchen, so you don’t have to squeeze as many in. It’s also much cheaper storage space than cabinets if you can use a walk-in (or even just step-in) pantry with open shelving.
• It allows you to use space which is not quite within the kitchen proper (because your pantry items are things you don’t use every day, so it’s OK if you have to take a few steps to get there). That means you can steal space from other rooms to make a pantry.
• A pantry cabinet, such as the fold-out, swing-out or pull-out models available from cabinetry companies, squeezes the most storage possible into the smallest square-footage of floor space, making all shelves accessible right to the very back without having to crawl on the floor to get to the back of a base cabinet. If you have a pantry cabinet which stretches right to the ceiling you may well need a small ladder or a step stool to reach the very top pullouts, but it’s still easier than reaching to the back of a deep cabinet. The shelves in pullouts are also height-adjustable, so you can set them to match their contents and squeeze in as many shelves vertically as possible.
• Pantry pull-out type cabinets are available even for small spaces, as small as 3″ wide from some companies, so you can use them to make use of every inch in your small kitchen.
• Having most of your food in one place instead of scattered around the cabinets not only makes it easy to find things (because there are fewer places to look) it also frees up space in the other cabinets for the utensils and equipment you use frequently.
• You can store seldom-used china and equipment in the pantry as well as food, keeping it out of the main kitchen and reducing clutter.

More Counter Space!

A pantry can also help maximise counter space in a small kitchen, in several ways.

• If you have a walk-in pantry outside the kitchen, there’s less need for tall cabinets in the kitchen itself and so more potential counter space.
• If you have room in a pantry to store small appliances, or if you can store them in cabinets because your food is now in the pantry, it frees up counter space.
• If you have cabinet pantries, although the most common ones are full height you can also get them as base cabinets and wall cabinets, so you can still have counter space between them.

As well as saving on cabinet space and free-ing up counter space, a pantry can save aggravation too – if the pantry is at one end of the kitchen and snacks are stored there, it minimises multiple people wandering through the kitchen as kids and spouses can get what they need without entering the work core.

So, when you’re planning a small kitchen remodel, make sure you include pantry designs in your thinking.