Old farmhouse kitchens used to have little hidden rooms next to them that were used for separate pantries. These rooms provided the necessary storage shelves for jars of home-canned fruits and vegetables, large bags of flour and sugar, cookware used occasionally, and baked goods that the cook would save for a later meal. They needed this space because most kitchens had few, if any, cabinets to store food. However, the newer houses were not built to have pantries. Instead, additional cabinets were added. Still, with all the things a modern cook needs to store, most women find their kitchen storage space inadequate. However, even in a newer kitchen, it is possible to add kitchen pantry cabinets to increase storage space.
Some pantries are add-on units that match the rest of the cabinetry and are designed to be installed at the same time as the rest of the cabinetry. However, in many kitchens this didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a pantry. As long as you have room for the unit, you can buy something that may not exactly match your other cabinets, but will look good with them. These can be single or double door units that are equipped with numerous small shelves and pull out drawers to give you easy access even to items stored in the back.
Another way to fit a pantry into your kitchen is to use the space in some of your existing cabinets. Companies make pantry inserts that fit into your cabinets and doors to create much more storage space than you had with just the original cabinets and shelves. These inserts can be added to single cabinets, upper or lower cabinets, and double cabinets. These systems include drop-down shelving that allows you to store many more canned or packaged items than you ever would in a single cabinet and then freely access them. The units themselves are made from solid woods, like maple and veneers, so they look and last like high-end cabinetry.
There’s no need to pass up that great deal on a new appliance because your kitchen is too crowded. With a few simple changes, you can almost double your existing space and make everything more convenient at the same time. The cost of adding pantry inserts is much lower than if you had to buy the entire cabinet all over again, and you’ll love how you can store all your kitchen paraphernalia out of sight.