Four Unusual Food Storage Options For Your Home

Written by Posted On Wednesday, 18 April 2018 12:49

 

Unusual Solution #1 - for Large Kitchens and/or Large Families

Do you have a lot of space and a large family that goes through a lot of food? You might be relieved to find that somebody has thought up a way to repurpose the concept of the 19th-century tall library bookshelves with a sliding ladder for modern-day use as enclosed pantry storage that is accessed the same way. Built by architect Mac Patterson, that idea became a reality and was featured in This Old House. Old homes were built with high kitchen cabinetry, but this is a way you can store even more food. A wall or two that is devoted to floor-to-ceiling cabinetry either within a fairly large kitchen or in a nearby room or hallway is a way to neatly and elegantly store an obscene amount of food for your growing army within a small amount of floor space. Instead of sending an older child to the store for some dried bonito flakes or something, you could just send him or her up the ladder!

 

Unusual Solution #2 – for Normal Kitchens

Normal kitchens have the advantage of utilizing the small-kitchen hacks along with space-saving ideas that fit into a little more space. As featured in HouseBeautiful article, Mick DeGuilio designed a wide, but shallow, enclosed pantry for one Chicago kitchen. Baskets of fruit and vegetables, as well and jars of various items are highly accessible. With this one, a lot of clutter can be tucked away, hidden behind this handy pantry’s closed doors. Of course, a quick and easy alternative would be the stackable, double-bin storage bin units that Amazon sells. The units allow the bins to slide out like drawers. They are ideal for pantries that have a flat wall, but the shiny chrome they are made of makes them pretty enough to place within sight if you don’t have an enclosed area to put it in.

 

Unusual Solution #3 - for Tiny Kitchens

Some of the more creative inventions come from necessity, and nobody needs space solutions more than the small-kitchen cook. Every cubic inch of a kitchen’s space needs to be used wisely. While you could borrow ideas from campers or the disaster preparedness community (where it is not unusual to find food stored in unusual places throughout the home), there are some ideas for food storage that can be implemented within a tiny kitchen. If you’ve got to make do with a tiny kitchen, you’ve likely already thought of storing food items in decorative baskets that sit above your existing upper cabinets. You may be planning to store your tea on the wall in a cheery champagne box, and you may have already eyed the small, two-tier lazy susans or the metal can rotators on Amazon for use in your cupboards.

 

But if you can afford to have your cabinetry retrofitted or a couple of them replaced, a pull-out pantry is ideal for small kitchens. As described in another issue of HouseBeautiful, designer Stephanie Stokes uses two of them in her tiny (48-square-foot) New York City kitchen to store, and easily access, dry food items. Extending cabinets to the ceiling and using a ladder to access them may work for you too if you can afford them and you have room for a ladder.

 

Unusual Solution #4 – for Any Kitchen

While the concept of storage bins is nothing new, there is a highly useful and inexpensive 6-pack set of hard-plastic organizers by mDesign being sold on Amazon that just about anyone could use. These bins are similar to the clear, deep ice holders that are found in an old-fashioned refrigerator’s freezer door, but they have handles on them are stackable. These bins can be used to store and stack food nearly to capacity in a normal-sized refrigerator or freezer. Alternatively, they can be used on top of a refrigerator, in a pantry, on a countertop, and inside cabinets. Being long, narrow and stackable, they can also be used in secret hiding places within walls, etc.

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Carol Evenson

Carol is a home renovation specialist with a background in organization and sales. She assists realtors with business management and growth.

https://twitter.com/cmill_com

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