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| What is your favorite height between shelves in your pantry?
I came home yesterday and my carpenter had built shelves in my new, small pantry. He only spaced the tallest 12" apart -- I could not stand a cereal box upright on this and know that they need to be re-worked and would greatly appreciate any feedback.
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Follow-Up Postings:
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| Hi Alice, Measure the items you typically store in your pantry and plan accordingly. If your shelves are shallow or you have pull-outs for easy access to the back, you won't need much clearance for height. If your shelves are fixed and deeper, you'll need a bit more clearance to access items stored at the back without having to remove things from the front. It sounds like your carpenter is doing custom work, so you should be able to place your shelves at whichever distances work for you. |
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| Our installer was terrific (and patient!); he worked with me to select the best heights for all of our pullouts, even moving a couple up or down a short time down the road. We took boxes, cans, bottles, etc., representing both typical sizes and some of the extreme heights as our guides (e.g. the tallest cereal box or canned good we're likely to have), and then spaced the pullouts accordingly. Some items I knew I'd want to store/keep together (in same pullout), while other groupings developed along the way as I started to put things in/on the pullouts. Always allow for the unexpected storage needs as well (our breadbox ended up on a pullout in our pantry when we discovered it was just too large to keep out on the counter, and the larger than my typical size box of rice that was on sale for less than the smaller one is stored on it's side so it will clear the pullout above). Our non-pullout shelves are moveable and it took me a lttle bit of time to get them positioned where I wanted them. You just have to start trying things out with the shelves in cetain positions, and move them up or down until you're happy with the storage capacity (and reachability) that the shelf spacing(s) allow. I can change my shelf heights if/when I ever need to, but I highly doubt I'd ever go to the bother! LOL |
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| Part of my challenge is I don't have much in the way of "typical" at the moment. We have been in our temporary basement kitchen w/a frig., micro and very limited storage since Nov. so I what I have on hand is small versions of our usual cereal boxes, no plastic/tupperware for bulk items, and few cans. If I can't prepare it in the micro, we are not eating it right now. I am soooo looking forward to preparing a "fresh" meal from scratch! I do like to stack two cans when I'm able, and I measured the diameter of my widest cans to get the side shelves the way I want them. I could still use some actual measurements that others have used and found helpful when storing larger cereal boxes, stacking two soup can heights, or using tupperware or other storage containers for bulk items. These will all be fixed shelves - no pull-outs. Shelf depth is about 12" right now. |
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| Go to the grocery store and pick up a few of the items you will be buying normally once the kitchen is done and measure. That's what I did. I have some shelves closer together and some farther apart. I made sure I could reach at least the bottom of whatever I stored on the top shelf (I'm 5'3") and I store mostly light tall things up there. Like cereal boxes (lots of headroom up there so who cares how tall they are), paper towels, paper napkins, etc. I also wanted to store some stuff on the floor of the pantry, so I made sure the bottom shelf was far enough off the ground to accommodate those things. One more thing, the light in my pantry is connected to the door so when I open the door, the light automatically comes on, and goes off when I close it. I love that, and plan to incorporate that system in all the closets in the house, eventually! |
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| This is what we did in our corner step-in pantry:
[The MW, btw, didn't fit so it is not in the pantry as originally planned.]
+++ [Sharb's] pantry measures 4 feet wide by 5 feet deep. 18" top shelf to ceiling (Things I don't need often or are lightweight.) The depth of the back shelf and the right side 12". The left side is 6" and holds my [SharB's] husband's hot sauces and other small items. |
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| Agree with above, do differing heights. In a perfect world, you'd have adjustable shelves. But if you can't or don't want them, do the different heights as listed above. That way you can store tall things and others accordingly. Our MW is in the pantry, love it. |
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| I started with Sharb's measurements, then adjusted according to my needs, and things like where outlets were placed, etc. My spaces between shelves, from floor to 9 ft ceiling are: 19", 15", 14", 10", 10", 14", 21 1/2". The 19" at the bottom allows for my roll-out bins for grains and pet food. The 10" are what I needed for cans stacked 2 high. The others fit cereal boxes, gallon jugs, my grain mill, etc.
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| THANK YOU! Just what I needed -- off to re-mark the walls! |
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