pantry

Part of my kitchen. Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

In my previous flat I had a pantry. When I moved to my present flat I had no idea where to put all the dry food-stuffs. I might have many cupboards in the kitchen, but none of them suitable to use as a pantry. In the beginning i used the lower cupboard in the corner plus the smaller one to the right of it. But that was no good. Both are too deep and you get no overview of what is in them. You more or less have to empty them and bring all things out to see what you have there… (That is still the case for what I store in there today, a really badly planned cupboard…). Why not the upper cupboards? Because they are too high up and I only reach the lowest shelves on them without using a pallet. I am too short.

BILLY as pantry. Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

As a temporary solution, when thinking about how to solve it, I bought a low BILLY bookcase with doors to use as a pantry. It works, but the backside of all BILLY bookcases nowadays are not that good as they used to be. They keep falling out at the lightest pressure. That never happened with the older BILLY bookcases… In the end I nailed the backside both to the bookcase frame and the backsides of the shelves in it to make the backside stay where it is supposed to be. And to keep the content on the shelves on the shelves…

BILLY as pantry. Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

You can get a LOT of things into a low Billy bookcase… It is not optimal though as it gets in the way of both the kitchentable and the chair there and the lower cupboard in the corner cannot be opened fully even when the doors are closed. When the doors are open, not all… At least you get a good overview of the stuff stored in there and it is easy to reach and get out when needed.

BILLY as pantry. Photo: ©nini.tjader.2014

What I actually want to do, if I ever can afford it, is to exchange the shelves in the lower cupboard in the corner for drawers. Then get rid of the low Billy and instead have drawers for a pantry for the dry stuff. Last time I checked what it would cost it was around SEK 7000… because I cannot use an Ikea solution. The cupboard frames is of a make (Marbodal) that cannot use Ikeas stuff (according to Ikea). I will recheck the measures and see if Ikeas new kitchen solutions could work anyways. I haven’t checked since Ikea changed their kitchen product line. I do not want to tear out the existing cupboard frames if I can avoid it. Too much work. too expensive. To exchange shelves for drawers though, that would be doable and something I could do myself.