Pantry: Phase 1

I guess kitchen pantries weren't a big thing in the 1970s?  Our house was not built with a pantry and previous owners/tenants attempted to create one in combination with a laundry room.

"Pantry."

That's what we've been working with since May.  The "shelves" are maybe 8 inches wide and obviously aren't strong enough to hold much.  They are attached to DIY cabinets over the washer and dryer which we recently had to temporarily reattach to the wall after they almost fell on my head when I opened one of the doors.

I don't even think it needs to be said that this isn't sufficient.  My KitchenAid mixer currently lives on the kitchen floor.  That is not a way to live.  Unless you want to end up on "Hoarders" or in the ER with a broken foot because you dropped the mixer while trying to heave it from the floor to the kitchen counter.  Granted, in the future I'll be carrying it from the pantry, but at least I can start off not at ground level.

So, this weekend begins Operation Pantry.  We are expanding the existing laundry room/pantry into the garage, taking down the crappy cabinets and shelves, and putting up new shelving.  There is a vent above the door in the picture, so the room is more of an extension of the house than an enclosed area of the garage (meaning unopened boxes of food won't be sitting in extreme temperatures).

Last weekend we moved these cabinets in the garage to the back wall and hung them.  

Patrick now has his man space in the garage.

We will be framing the cleared out area this weekend.

Nothing seems to go according to plan with this house, so cross your fingers we don't find anything crazy behind the wall to the left of the door when we knock it out.  We're moving the entrance into the pantry around to the side by the water heater.

I've been looking at pantry organization pictures on Pinterest.  I still don't understand why people feel the need to dump all dry goods into plastic containers that are the same size or larger than the original packaging and then claim that everything is more organized.  Cereal is still lined up on a shelf, it's just in a different container.  But what do I know?  I don't have room to store more than one box of cereal at the moment.