Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Shelf Life

When you live in a house with two adults that love to cook, kitchen space is always at a premium. We entertain a lot, so our pantry is stocked not only with edibles, but with all manner of platters, serving bowls, cake stands, coffee makers, ice cream makers, pie pans, ramekins, pastry bags & tips, fancy beverage glasses, portable hot plates (great for both canning demos out and about and in-home soirees to keep soups or drinks warm) mandolines, immersion blenders, rolling pins and so. much. more.

Couple that with a penchant for canning and a spouse found of picking up sets of dinner plates whenever he sees some that he likes and our pantry is packed to the gills. Ever resourceful, Hubs created this canning shelf to make use of the unused vertical space in the pantry. The shelves are in a variety of heights to accommodate the height of half-pint, pint, and quart jars respectively.

Our pantry (and entire home, for that matter) runs a bit on the dark side, so apologies on the last photos in the group. You get the jist of it, though, I think. If you're fond of canning but have found yourself similarly short on space, you might want to consider such a shelving system. With it now in place, our pantry is definitely 'moving on up'!

6 comments:

EcoGrrl said...

Great idea! I hate using good space for empty jars!

elisa said...

so brilliant! i love how the shelf sizes fit the jars. i want to see it full of preserves! x

Unknown said...

Beautiful shelves! I'm thinking of having a design student or someone come into our tiny kitchen and help me figure out how to squeeze more space out of it. It's seriously tiny.

Anonymous said...

That looks great, and I completely love that it's sized to fit different sizes of jars - so clever!

While I don't have a pantry per se, I'm now eyeing the poorly used space above out kitchen cabinets as candidates for some kind of extra shelving. The space is very small, and we keep a lot of food and kitchen tools on hand, so more shelving would be fantastic.

Grace said...

Love the idea but I don't have anywhere to put the shelf! I keep buying antique jelly cupboards to store the fruits of my obsession, I mean hobby, in, but I don't have room for any more of them, either! Somebody stop me before I can again!

Ngo Family Farm said...

Oooh, I need one of those! It's beautiful-what a gift your husband has.
-Jaime