The case of the kitchen cabinet pantry

It’s time to take a fresh look at home design and consider the kitchen cabinet pantry. There was a time when all houses were built with a large pantry next to the kitchen. In many average homes, the pantry was the size of a small or medium room.

Over the years, the pantry disappeared from the average American home. Around the same time, people migrated from rural areas to the suburbs. Migration, more than a change of address, brought with it a change of lifestyle.

People did not have space in the suburbs to maintain small home gardens or vegetable gardens. They stopped growing and canning or freezing their fruits and vegetables. They also stopped making their own jellies and jams.

Another lifestyle change occurred around the same time people moved to the suburbs: the two-race family. When Mom started working outside the home, there was no time to can and freeze. In fact, there was much less time to prepare the food.

Trends in home design and kitchen preferences have led to smaller kitchens, larger appliances, and fewer cabinets. The great proliferation of small appliances in the kitchen followed. Soon people needed more cabinets to hold the food processor, coffee maker, mixer, electric can opener, waffle maker, toaster, etc.

With the renewed interest in gourmet cooking, there was also a perceived need for all sorts of gadgets, tools, and the like. As people invested in meal preparation, the kitchen began to regain its status as the center of family life. Today, kitchens are the center of a family’s life: eating, talking, entertaining, preparing food and cleaning.

Although designers began designing larger kitchens with space for top-of-the-line appliances, they did not include a kitchen cabinet pantry. People today are busier than ever, making shopping a more time-consuming task. Since many people want to shop only weekly (rather than daily), it seems the time has come to consider the kitchen cabinet pantry.

Kitchen cabinet pantry is available in a variety of sizes, styles, woods, and configurations. A kitchen cabinet pantry can be freestanding, wall mounted, or slide between two cabinets (or a cabinet and a refrigerator). In fact, a custom kitchen may have more than one “pantry” modified for specific uses.

Today’s kitchen cabinet pantry is used to store any number of items. It can also be customized for specific types of storage and items. A kitchen cabinet pantry can also be organized in various ways.

Many pantries have multiple shelves and organizational units to store canned soft drinks, soups, canned vegetables, and canned fruit. They can be customized for pull-out shelves and slide-out baskets. All or part of a kitchen cabinet pantry can be built to store almost anything in an organized, neat and accessible manner.

Some people organize their kitchen cabinet pantry in alphabetical order; others put together items that are used together; still others group items by container size. A growing number of homeowners are also designing kitchens for multiple single-use pantries:

  • one next to the stove and oven for spices
  • one near the stove for canned goods and
  • another in a corner with containers for potatoes, onions, and large fresh vegetables, glass or heavy plastic containers for staples like flour, sugar, brown sugar, etc., pasta containers, and grain and bean containers

A kitchen cabinet pantry can be used for any number of other items including

  • table linen
  • plates
  • cookbooks
  • displayed
  • light bulbs
  • candles and matches
  • Sneakers
  • pet treats
  • serving trays

The recent housing crisis has caused us to leave the big houses and think of smaller houses. These houses will also have smaller kitchens. In small kitchens it is essential to make the most of the space with storage options that include the kitchen cabinet pantry.

Thinking of all our “stuff” and our need to reduce visible clutter to make the room look bigger, we need organized storage options that save space. Clearly, it’s time to consider the kitchen cabinet pantry. Call your cabinetmaker to create the pantry (or pantry) you need to match your kitchen cabinets.

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