5 Pantry Storage Essentials Your Kitchen Needs
As a central hub of the kitchen, the way your pantry is organised can set you up for culinary success – or derail your entire cooking operation.
No matter what style of kitchen pantry cabinet you have, there are some universal tips and tricks when it comes to storage for pantry organisation that can help you get the most out of your space.
From pull-out pantries to walk-ins or butler’s pantries to converted cupboards in neighbouring rooms – there are a few must-haves that we’d recommend keeping handy to store ingredients, group items by theme and make sure you never have to throw away a packet of unopened, expired food ever again.
Kitchen shelf risers
While items like lazy susans can help to provide easy access to small ingredients like spice and sauces, they don’t address the often wasted vertical space between pantry shelves.
That’s where kitchen shelf risers come in – a low-cost, easy-to-implement option that essentially doubles your shelf space by creating a secondary shelf tier with open space underneath.
Decant dry ingredients like rice and baking items into tubs that can slide underneath the shelf riser and use the top to store any taller boxes like cereal or pasta.
Kitchen shelf risers can also free up space in your crockery or glassware cupboard, as the design lends well to stackable items. Forget moving a pile of bowls off your stack of plates to access the servingware at the back of your cupboard – shelf risers put everything within easy reach in your kitchen pantry cabinet.
Pull-out drawers
If you have open space beneath your shelves or find that your bottom shelves aren’t as practical as you’d like them to be, consider converting this space to a set of pull-out drawers. Whether they’re deep and wide or shallow and narrow, this can be a lot more functional than more shelving space and can house a wide range of pantry items.
Considering that you’ll likely be viewing your drawers’ contents from above, you can label everything on top of the jar or container and afford to pack your items in.
Line the bottom of your drawers with a non-stick mat to prevent items from sliding around when the drawers are opened and closed, and to protect them from spills and stains.
For more organisation tips and tricks, download your copy of our latest eBook. It’s filled with design principles, trends and inspiration to help you get the most out of your space.
Spice rack
Creating a dedicated space in your kitchen pantry cabinet for spices can help to free up a lot of space, while providing easy access to the flavours that you love to cook with.
If you have a walk-in or cupboard-style pantry, consider a spice rack that’s affixed to the inside of your cupboard door. Sitting within the shelf cavity when the door is closed, this style of spice rack means you know exactly where to find what you’re looking for and leaves your shelves clear for other ingredients.
For pull-out pantries or smaller kitchens, making use of awkward narrow spaces like alongside the oven or above a deeper drawer for a concealed spice rack can transform otherwise dead space into a home for your herbs and spices.
Shallow shelves
Along with kitchen shelf risers, shallow shelves are another way to get more use out of tall or deep shelves in your pantry.
A more customised solution, adding shallow shelves with custom kitchen joinery creates a tiered storage solution perfect for maintaining visibility over all your ingredients.
Small appliance hutch
Freeing up bench space is on many homeowners’ kitchen wish lists, and rehoming small appliances out of sight in the kitchen pantry cabinet is an easy way to achieve this.
Create a small appliance kitchen cabinet or nook in the bottom third of your pantry to house appliances like your blender, sandwich press and any other items that don’t get used on a daily basis.
Even an item like the kettle may be better to be brought out for its single-use each day rather than living on your bench!
Looking for more ways to maximise storage in your kitchen? Let our team of experts help you to reimagine your space and reclaim that all-important storage through clever design and layout tweaks.
We work with suppliers like Hafele to implement smart storage solutions, covering everything from flap fittings and drawer systems to corner units and waste management.
Get in touch with us for a free, no-obligation consultation about your project.
