What Features Should Be In My Kitchen Pantry?

When you’re looking to have a kitchen pantry in your home, you’ll want to ensure you have every feature you’ll need to make the most out of it. As well as being a place to store your food, there are many other benefits to having a kitchen pantry, with a range of different features available. So which features should be in your kitchen pantry?

Storage Space

It goes without saying that a kitchen pantry needs storage. However, with kitchen pantries being a fashionable thing to have in a kitchen, some will want to have one in their kitchen merely for the aesthetics, without sometimes thinking about whether they have the room for one. Ensuring you’ll have enough space can be figured out in the design process of your kitchen, where you can use the measurements of the design to work out whether having a pantry in your kitchen will be an effective use of space.

In a compact or medium-sized kitchen, a walk-in pantry is off the cards; however a little cubby corner or storage area could be transformed into a useful kitchen pantry. You may also want to do away with a few kitchen cabinets, and you can include a kitchen pantry in place of a few of them, which can free up the storage space to make your pantry practical.

Plenty of Shelves

When the number one goal is storing food, it’s only natural that you’d want your pantry kitchen to include plenty of storage space, and shelving is a great way to maximise space. Shelves allow you to stack your food safely and securely, and you can even divide different levels and areas of shelving up to make things easier to find when you open the pantry door.

As well as the number of shelves, there needs to be variety too. You should look to have different shelves at different heights to allow you to store different types of food and drink. For example, bottles of drink or spaghetti would need height to fit in, whereas canned foods don’t need as much room.

Easy-to-use Design

There’s nothing worse than having something added to your home that looks nice but actively makes your life that little bit more difficult. And whilst kitchen pantries are designed to look amazing, the practical benefits shouldn’t be forgotten, as they’ve made kitchen pantries as popular as they are. Ease of use should be key to your kitchen pantry’s layout. Everything should be easy to find and easy to grab, at a height suitable to you. If you’re tall then you might be comfortable with a taller pantry, but if you aren’t then you might prefer something shorter.

One style you might want to adopt is a ‘reach in’ pantry style, where the cupboard and shelves aren’t too deep, meaning everything is on view and it’s easy to reach into the pantry and grab whatever you need.

Walk-in Option

Whilst this might not be an option for everyone – mostly due to the space required – having a walk-in pantry can have many benefits. Because it’s a walk-in, it’ll naturally be larger, meaning you can store many more items in your pantry. And whilst this does include the long-life perishables that you’ll need for cooking your favourite meals, it also means plenty of space to store small kitchen appliances when they’re not in use.

If that wasn’t enough, if your walk-in pantry is large enough, it can also house a fridge freezer in there too, making your pantry the go-to place for any food and drink items in your house.

Should I Get A Kitchen Pantry?

Whether or not you decide to have a kitchen pantry in your home will come down to a range of factors. Firstly, do you have space for one? Either a walk-in pantry or something more compact. In addition to this, do you think you will use it? A kitchen pantry is only useful if it’s used often, otherwise it just takes up space. And finally, does it make your life easier? Kitchen pantries are great because they can be more useful than kitchen cupboards in some circumstances, however if having a kitchen pantry won’t make your life easier and your kitchen more organised, then you might want to explore alternative kitchen design options.

Also, Read – Kitchen Essentials: The Ultimate List