The Pantry – Updated at Last! – The Less Than Perfect Kitchen

I just realized that it has been almost a year since I wrote “The Pantry” article for my Less Than Perfect Kitchen Series (scroll down a bit on the side bar to find the series).  The most beautiful pantry I have ever seen is found is Ruth’s, at Warm Pie, Happy Home.  Wow!  This sort of pantry will never be a reality in my home, but it’s fun to look at and admire all the same.

While my pantry is still not perfect, it is now much improved.  Perhaps, one day in the future, we can tear out the fixed shelving that is too shallow and not at all efficient and replace it with something better.  In the meantime, though, looking well to the ways of my household means working with what I have to make it work better for me.  I am quite happy with how the pantry has turned out.

That was the BEFORE version.

It took four coats of red paint to coat the walls, but only two coats of Antique White semi gloss to paint the shelves and shelf supports.  I did have to buy a gallon of  the red paint (Behr California Poppy), but there is about 2/3 of a gallon left over.  This is the same color that I have on my dining room wall, so there will be plenty for touch ups or a fresh coat of paint in the dining room, in the future.

Here is my pantry now.   Leaving the doors off the pantry has made it much more accessible.  There is no natural light back there unless the back door is open, and even then there’s not much.  The red paint may have made the pantry a bit darker than it was, but that is offset by having both doors gone.   And I love the red!

However, my plan always was to put some lighting in the pantry.  There is no wiring for a light fixture, nor any plugs in the pantry; but our Costco is selling very inexpensive packages of battery powered LED lights.  These are adjustable, too, so that I was able to focus the light where I wanted it.

Though my pantry is in a back hall just off my kitchen, it was still important for me to make it look nice.  I love it when function and form/beauty can coexist!  I corralled all of the small packages of like odds and ends, such as bags of dried fruit, boxes of baking chocolate and cake decorating tips, kids’ snacks, etc. into baskets.  The baskets not only keep like things together neatly, but they add a nice touch, as well.  I was thrilled to find two matching sets of four baskets at K-Mart.  I wanted natural colored baskets, but these with the navy blue trim work perfectly for the Americana theme in my kitchen.

I also added a couple of extra “shelves”, the kind with folding legs.  The one on the floor is the perfect size for the two biggest baskets.  The bottom basket holds my potatoes.

I then went on a hunt around my home.  What else was there that was dear to me that I would enjoy having where I could enjoy it?  My late mother-in-love’s enamelware bowls were in the garage.  I love these things!!  They are banged up, and a bit rusty here and there.  There is evidence of someone trying to repair chips in the past with white paint.  They are perfect in my eyes!!  The smaller one was washed up and put into the lower, back corner to hold my big jugs of vinegar, oil and dish soap.  The rim of the bowl is quite bent, but because of this “damage” it fit where I wanted to put it!

The other folding shelf allowed me to keep quite a few more things on the same shelf as the “fats” and the “stickies” in my pantry.  One little basket holds all of our boxes of baking chocolates, and the other the cake decorating tips and supplies.  I painted all of the shelves with semi-gloss paint to make wiping up spills easy, but I still used a textured shelf liner for the “fats” and “stickies” shelf.  My husband asked what he could do to help when I was putting everything back in the pantry after the paint dried, and I asked him to cut the liner to fit for me.  He is such a detail oriented person, the liner fits perfectly.

Part of what I hoped to accomplish was to be able to “display” some of the items we use (my long red metal trays, and our iced tea jugs for example) up at the top.  I also added our bread baskets, and one or two other serving-type baskets.

I also wanted part of a shelf that I could just have some pantry pretties on, and I was thrilled, when it was all said and done, to have a full shelf just for that!  I’ve placed a vintage milk jug/lunch bucket on the shelf.  (Thanks again, Meg!)   I also pulled out all of my deviled egg dishes.  The blue with the chicken salt & pepper shakers went on the shelf, and I bought plate holders for the other three so that I could display them upright behind everything else, without any danger of their toppling over.  It will take only a couple of minutes to take them down and wash them  when I want to use them.  In the meantime, though, I can enjoy them every day rather than having them tucked away in a cupboard.

My mom’s covered dish, salt & pepper set came out of a sideboard and went onto the shelf, too.  It is quite old.   I added just a bit of crochet there by placing a vintage red doily underneath Mom’s set.  The red doily was also my mom’s.

This note, in my mom’s own handwriting, is tucked inside of the covered dish.  It explains when and who gave this set to her.  She did this note writing for almost all of our family heirlooms.  Not only do I appreciate her taking the time to preserve that bit of family history for me, but I love having little bits and pieces of my mom’s handwriting in so many of the pretty things that are now in my own home.

I washed up my mother-in-love’s larger enamelware bowl, too, and put it on the top shelf of the pantry set on its edge.  It will be available, and only need a quick wash up, anytime I might want to use it.  Once the large bowl was in place, I knew I needed something else with a bit of height next to it.  I took the red kitchen scale off the top of my fridge, tucked a napkin that my mom embroidered into the bowl and used that to fill the spot.  Again, the scale is just as handy here as on the fridge, but I love the way it looks here.

Still to be done:  I want to paint the wall around the outside of the pantry, as well as the trim around the opening of the pantry.  I’ll have to carefully feather in the painting at the corner so as not to spoil the “cracked stucco, bricks and ivy that Dani painted for me a few years ago.   I’ll not be able to get to the painting until next week.  I also plan to keep my eyes open for some things to hang on the wall above the pantry opening - reproduction tin signs for food products are what I have in mind, but we’ll see what I find as time progresses.

My less than perfect pantry still is less than perfect, but I love it’s new look!  There was some expense involved, but for about $100 (paint, baskets, folding shelves and lighting), I was able to accomplish exactly what I wanted.  It makes me smile every time I walk by!

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