Open Storage in the Pantry
When I was a kid one of my favorite chores was organizing and cleaning my parents’ pantry. They had this lovely 8′ x 4′ or so walk in pantry and I found such joy in pulling over a step stool, pulling everything out onto the dining table, and carefully putting it all back in. There was such intention and purpose in the groupings and everything had to be stacked just-so. For days, weeks even, I would make sure it stayed spotless. Then life happened and things would slowly get out of order and six months or so later, I would organize it all over again.
I’m not sure what it was about the pantry that I delighted in organizing so much. Luckily, that same desire fueled me to make sure that our butler’s pantry would be properly organized and stay that way. Since we had housed most of our food items in our Ikea-hacked Billy bookcase shelving, I was excited to tackle the more functional things in our Akurum Cabinets. If you recall from last time, we opted not to get cabinet doors to save some cash and to try out open cabinets. We can always add doors later, although I am toying with the idea of adding a skirted-curtain as well. So we’ll see!
I had put a lot of thought into how I wanted to set up the items in our cabinet. The entire point of having a butler’s pantry is to have a place to house the appliances we use frequently, but don’t want cluttering up our kitchen countertops. Housing them can be a pain due to their bulk and how many small accessories or various pieces each one has with it.
In the end, the appliances that made the cut were our Keurig, Vitamix, food processor and KitchenAid stand mixer. These are appliances we use almost daily, so I designed the function of our cabinet set up around them. I decided to set the cabinets up as stations—coffee/tea, smoothies, savory food prep and baking were the main ones that coordinated with the appliances. (Our pressure cooker is out on the end in this photo because we were making dinner!) 🙂
I adore the function. When I want to make coffee, everything I need (minus cream!) is right underneath the Keurig, like so. There are K-cups, tea in tins and to-go cups.
With our smoothie area I made sure flax seed, powdered peanut butter and straws were all accessible easily.
Underneath our food processor lives the spare parts and attachments for it, our bbq grill utensils, mandolin slicer and even a potato drawer!
Finally, in the baking section:
And thankfully there was lots of left over room for the random little gadgets that never quite fit in our kitchen cabinets before!
Excited that my spiralizer has a home now! My favorite recipe to make with it is here.
After it was all set up I was so happy with everything, except for how the cords looked all over the countertop! Yuck!
My first thought was to try and hide the cords by grouping the appliances together in front of the outlets. But I felt like that looked crazy and it messed up the function of my stations! 😛
It took some brainstorming, but I found I was able to push the cords down behind the countertop just enough so they wouldn’t show as much. Much better. 🙂
We’ve had a week or so to practice using our set up here and it is PERFECT. It’s so easy and unfussy and quick to put away and use things. I’m so thrilled with how our pantry is turning out—just like when I was a kid! 🙂 We are almost done…just a couple of posts left I think. 🙂
PS- Thank you all for the sweet encouragements you left last week. I am feeling much better…choosing joy for sure! 🙂 You might notice that there are a few updated things on the blog—I reworked my about me page and added some FAQs that had been sent my way. I also made a few changes on the sidebar including adding some new advertisers. Lastly…exciting news! Scott has been doing real-estate for awhile now—we own and manage a couple of rental properties. He decided to make it official and got his real estate license and now that he’s out for summer break he is doing real estate full time, hooray! So if anyone needs the best real estate agent ever….lemme know. 🙂
Tania Griffis is an accomplished writer, blogger, and interior designer with a Journalism degree from the University of Oklahoma. She started her popular blog, Run to Radiance, in 2011, demonstrating her design expertise through the personal remodeling of six houses to millions of readers across the globe.
Tania also owns The Creative Wheelhouse, a respected ghostwriting agency for bloggers, further showcasing her talent for creating engaging and informative content.
oh gosh, i hope my kids grow up to love cleaning and organizing – that sure would make things easier for me! hehe, and you grow up to be an interior designer (funny i don’t know you’re fulltime profession) with what seems like an extra special touch for organization 🙂
Thank you! I think most kiddos like it for a season?? I’m hoping so!
Also- I’m a freelance writer and photographer by day. And I guess by night too? 😛
Look at all that great space you have. I wish we had more space for all the random appliances. Can’t wait to see what else you’ve done (I spy a shelf above everything).
And glad you’re feeling better this week! Good luck to Scott with the real estate! I work all week with agents. I hope the market is on fire there like it is here.
Good eye Samantha! You are right on the shelving. Ding ding! 🙂 And yes…Dallas market is on fire for sure!!! Lucky for us 🙂
Love all this organization!!!! Let me know when you can come work on our house 😉
Haha anytime Caroline! 🙂
Great work on this one guys! I love the room you gave each appliance!
Thanks Coby! Now I just have to STOP BUYING appliances!! 😀
Very very nice.
Thanks so much! 🙂
I have total pantry envy! Y’all have done an amazing job in there. Love the idea of having the zones. Think I’m gonna steal it!
LOVE your butler’s pantry! Would love to have one myself, but no place to put one. A work in progress, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.