I have this goal…..a long held, nearly impossible (for me) goal, but one I shall keep working on until the day I die. That goal? To have a well stoked, well organised pantry. Thing is, I don’t own a pantry. I don’t really even own kitchen cupboards which we could use as a pantry.
We have a tiny kitchen. Not enough room to swing a mouse, let alone a poor cat….should one want to. The great thing (and I always like to look at the positives) is that very little walking needs to be done to move from one worktop to another, or maybe I should say THE other. One literally needs to turn on one’s heel and low and behold there is the other counter. I can be cooking and chucking dirty pans in the sink, all at the same time, even though the sink and cooker reside on completely opposite ends of the kitchen. See? Tiny.
We have one wall cabinet which has two small shelves, and until a couple of years ago, that was it. And you know? It was easy keeping that ‘pantry’ full. A pot of tea and a jar of coffee beans, a pack of cereal and maybe some rice, and well, it was stocked. Thing was, that type of stock wouldn’t feed my son for one day, let alone a family of seven for a few weeks. But I am a creative soul and where one person may see hallway I see potential for book cases, pantries, shoe storage, office area….oh and a bedroom. Living in a two bedroom house makes this family of seven think outside the box. Nothing is as it seems chez-moi and each square foot of our house is put to maximum use.
A couple of years ago Gary built some thin cupboards which for a while we used to store shoes, then decided we needed the space for food more than for shoes. So we swapped, and ever since it has been used as a pantry, albeit a very thin small one (see above photo on left hand side and right hand side of photo below).
Over the next year or so I shall be sharing periodically how I, disorganised house wife extraordinaire, have managed to build up and stock a pantry without so much as a pantry in sight and on a tiny budget. This is little house living at its most creative and I am looking forward to sharing 🙂