Our Life's Legacy: House Before and After: Pantry!

It's funny how as you get older the things that make your heart go pitter patter change. I have no shame in admitting that the first time I toured the new house, the sight of the space under the stairs immediately made me super excited. Embarrassingly excited. An actual pantry!

Those of you who saw our last kitchen totally understand why I was thrilled. I had TWO cabinets and TWO shelves on a microwave cart to store canned goods, baking supplies, cereal... really anything that didn't need to be refrigerated. It was rough, but somehow I made it work. Having a pantry allows me to use all of my kitchen cabinets for non-food items, and that is amazing! It allows me to organize my supplies so much better.

Here's the space under the stairs before. You may not be able to tell, but it is quite deep. The two silver boxes are part of the air returns. I can only imagine what grossness was in here when the previous owners occupied this place. Ew.

The guys who were working on the house were going to close up the pantry in front of the air return thingies (boxes? cases? enclosures?), but I asked them not to. Why would I want to miss out on any possible storage space? I imagined that the very back area could be used for surplus storage (paper towels, pet food, etc.).

Here's the after!

So great, right??

Now, I didn't organize this space for this post and make it all pretty. This is real life, people. It is sort of organized anyway, just so I can find things easier. The back shelf is all baking supplies. Top shelf is canned goods and pasta. Second shelf is rice, dried beans, oils, and breakfast stuff. Third shelf is all of Adam's protein powders, "stockpiled" stuff, and kitchen towels. I have my bread machine, plastic shopping bags, and the world's largest box of milk bones on the floor. I haven't really utilized the space in the back on the floor yet, but I have plenty of things to fill it with :)