Saturday, July 25, 2009

Maximizing Space

Food storage has been something of a challenge in our house. For some reason, the builders of the house did not think to include a pantry in the kitchen, so we only have cabinets. The entryway closet is the closest thing we have to a pantry. It was apparently meant to be used as a coat closet. It has the bar in it where a person would normally hang coats, but the bar really serves no purpose since there are also shelves built in there. I suspect that these shelves were built by another former resident who had food storage difficulties. We had it all worked out where we had just enough room to store all our kitchen stuff and food between the cabinets in the kitchen and the entryway closet.


Well, we did have it all figured out until I decided to start canning food. Where were we going to put all those jars? My husband came up with a great plan to make more room in the closet/pantry so we could store all the new tasty canned foods I will be making. Here's the closet. Yeah, I buy store brands.


closet1


If you notice on the bottom food shelf, I like to keep the baggies of dog treats with the extra peanut butter and the minced garlic. It's a tasty combo. Anyway... These shelves used to be totally filled with food. In order to make more space, my husband did this.


closet3


He cut boards to fit along the wall from the front to the back of the closet. Then he cut blocks of wood to screw into the wall as braces. Once he got the braces screwed in he set the new shelves in place and screwed them into the existing shelves. Look how much space was being wasted before! It is so nice to have that extra space in the closet. Isn't my husband a genius?

2 comments:

Misty said...

Love the extended shelves! Way to go G!

Ma said...

Now get him to make you some of those snazzy little bleachers...you know so the short guys in the back can be seen!