Our pantry project is finally complete! We’re discussing everything we used to organize it, from floor to ceiling.
In This Post
It’s Time to Organize This Pantry!
We finally wrapped up our year-in-the-making pantry project just before Thanksgiving last year. The reveal post went live shortly after, but then the holidays came and stopped us in our tracks. Travel and time off from school and work kept us from making progress. But! We finally got back to work on it last week and got this space organized. And it feels great!
What It Needs to Do
As a quick recap, this space formerly functioned as a small indoor workshop with a more utilitarian vibe. Our garage is detached, so it gets cooooold in the winter months. Because of that, liquids items like paint need to be stored indoors to keep them from freezing and the workshop offered plenty of utilitarian storage for those items. There were a lot of opportunities for improvement, though, and we were sure we could store things more efficiently. We also needed to expand our food storage space, so the goal was to design a space with efficient hidden storage that looked great and performed multiple functions. Did we pull it off? Let’s find out…
Tall Cabinet (Left) | Food + Cleaning Supplies
We’ll start at the pocket door entrance to the room and work our way around in a counter-clockwise direction to keep the layout as clear as possible. The first cabinet on the left runs floor to ceiling with one drawer on the bottom (more on that later) and two massive doors opening into one space up top.
Inside this huge cabinet, we’ve installed a custom vertical divider to create two ‘zones’. On the left side, we’ve kept the cavity open for tall items like our floor mop and our trusty Dyson vacuum, which is plugged into an outlet in the cavity above. We’ve also installed a few small sections of Gear Track with assorted hooks to keep small items like flashlights within easy reach.
On the right side, we’ve installed a set of shelves with various sized bins and containers for our baking supplies, canned goods, bulk items, snacks and beverage mixes. Having all of our surplus food organized into a well executed, well lit space is an absolute game-changer. It feels like shopping from our own pantry.
Tall Cabinet Drawer (Left) | Shoe Storage
As we mentioned earlier, we maximized storage space behind the double doors at the top of this cabinet box, but we made sure to leave space for a large drawer at the bottom. This shallow workhorse functions as a perfect-depth shoe cabinet, located conveniently near the back door of our home. It’s a small touch, but one that maintains workshop/mudroom functionality in a space that’s infinitely more beautiful than its predecessor.
Countertop Cabinet (Left) | Paint Storage
Moving on from left to right, the next cabinet on our tour is the left countertop cabinet. Like the first cabinet, this one is around 17″ deep due to the location of the door into the room. This depth turned out to be perfect for multiple gallons of paint without being so deep that things get lost into the dark depths at the back of the shelves. These items are only accessed a few times per year at most, so we’re comfortable organizing them without pullouts or bins in order to maximize usable space.
Countertop Cabinet (Drawers) | Paper Storage + Empties
Next on the tour are the four huge drawers under the central countertop. These measure in at around 28″w x 13″h x 17″d, which has proven to be absolutely perfect for bulk paper good storage. The bottom right drawer has become our dedicated ‘donation’ drawer. We’ll fill it up over time and drop off a box or two to our favorite local charity once its full. On top of adding functionality for paper storage and donation organizing, we’ve also left ourselves two completely empty drawers! That’s right. The two left drawers are empty and will stay that way as long as humanly possible.
Countertop Cabinet (Right) | Fasteners, Small Parts + Specialty Tools
If there was an award for the most efficient and accessible storage, we’d nominate this particular cabinet to take home the grand prize. A dozen small bins that hold our fasteners, cutting tools and miscellaneous ‘keeper’ spare parts now live on a series of pull out sliders that bring them into perfect view for easy access.
The sliders also contain larger black bins for things like clamps, adhesives and rubber bumpers. The top slide-out and highest fixed shelf store our spare organizing bins for when we inevitably need them down the road. We’ve also created easy access to our fastener storage totes in case we need to bring commonly-used small bits offsite.
These small grey bins were originally part of our Gladiator Gear Wall storage system, but they happened to fit perfectly into the newly installed pullout trays. It was almost as if they were designed to work together perfectly.
Tall Cabinet (Right) | Workshop + Miscellaneous
Continuing on to the right is the largest cabinet in the pantry (and our home!). This thing is an absolute beast at over 9 feet tall, 4 feet wide and two feet deep. On this side, we opted for a ‘utility’ cabinet layout with three drawers at the bottom and a pair of doors at the top. This cabinet has swallowed an absolutely massive amount of stuff and kept it all tidy and within arms’ reach.
We searched high and low for the perfect clear bins to fill out the interior shelves and it was worth the effort. A trio of the large size bins fits perfectly across one shelf and four of the smaller bins fill the same space. The locking lids and stacking capabilities make these affordable bins a sure bet for any organization project. And they also score bonus points for having a perfect space for a DYMO label on each handle!
Tall Cabinet Drawers (Right) | Smalls + Tools
In the drawers below, we’ve added a Docking Drawer Blade Duo high speed charging unit to the top drawer to keep all of our rechargeable items at full capacity and out of the way.
The second drawer holds a compact folding ladder that turned out to be the perfect proportions to stash away here. We know. We were shocked too! We promise we didn’t plan it this way. It just sort of happened and we couldn’t be happier with this little bit of accidental perfection.
The bottom drawer is the largest and does the (literal) heaviest lifting. This drawer holds our compact shop vac, gigantic tool bag, and a few other frequently-accessed tools. At this point, we’re probably over-doing the weight limits on the drawer glide hardware, but we won’t tell if you don’t.
Kitchen Pantry Organization
Below, we’re sharing everything we used to get this pantry fully functional! We couldn’t make it possible without our favorite embossing label maker and the most perfectly sized latched bins, and honorable mention to our 2″ slim folding ladder to make it all within reach.
1. extra large clear plastic bins | 2. embossing label maker | 3. small parts storage box | 4. stackable dog food storage | 5. rattan round baskets | 6. small items bin | 7. wood storage bin with handles | 8. storage box with lid + latches | 9. pantry bin with dividers | 10. drawer organizer trays | 11. pop containers | 12. felt bin | 13. 3 step folding ladder
Looking for more kitchen, pantry or organizational content? Here are our closet org tips, some basket storage to consider, and our favorite kitchen hidden features. Also, check out some of our other kitchen before + afters. Here’s our Red House kitchen, our Chicago kitchen with red cabinets, a neutral kitchen at the Tree House, a two-toned white + wood kitchen at the Two Flat, and this compact kitchen with floating shelves!
you may have explained this before, but why don’t you store your tools in the garage?
The pantry stores things that we access frequently like a small drill, hand tools and a few small specialty items. Larger, less-frequently used tools live elsewhere.