Should Your Kitchen Have A Pantry?

Every person is different, so it’s no surprise that when it comes to the needs of a kitchen, every homeowner’s requirements are different too. There is no absolute right or wrong answer for what should go into a kitchen. One item that homeowners should carefully consider is whether to sacrifice kitchen cabinets space for a pantry.

Specific Spaces

In one sense, a pantry isn’t really giving up space for kitchen cabinets since it is itself just a variation on a kitchen cabinets. On the other hand, a pantry is not the same standard size as other kitchen cabinets and thus does not align itself neatly in an assembly with the other kitchen cabinets in the room.

A pantry is a larger, more open, and specialized form of cabinetry usually dedicated just to food storage. Obviously, food that requires cold storage will go into a refrigerator and/or freezer, but for dry goods, ingredients, spices, seasonings, and packaged snacks like cookies, potato chips, and others, a pantry is a natural storage space for anything that doesn’t need to be kept cool.

The Space Consideration With Kitchen Cabinets

Do you even need a pantry? This depends on your food usage situation. For some people, the kitchen is the most important room because they have fully committed to using it and cooking a lot at home. Anyone who prioritizes meal preparation at home loves using kitchen gadgets and genuinely prefers to make their food over eating out, or buys semi-prepared, packaged food that can just be warmed up in an oven or microwave will probably want a pantry.

Pantries, however, take up enormous space from kitchen cabinets. Some pantries are the size of walk-in closets. Even when they don’t take up this much space, a pantry can take up a good chunk of the kitchen wall, potentially from floor to ceiling.

Carefully and honestly evaluate your home kitchen needs. Pantries can be an eye-catching design element of any kitchen, but they also take up a lot of space.