The best way to make the most of a small kitchen is to optimize your pantry organization. These clever storage ideas can help get you started!

You can find practically every kind of house you can imagine somewhere in Northern Virginia, from colonial-era colonials to geodesic domes. What is harder to find is the perfect kitchen. The most common complaints we hear at Closet America is that people’s kitchens are too small and constantly cluttered.

Living with a small kitchen can require some practical adjustments, it’s true. One of the most important things for you to do in a small kitchen is to optimize your pantry organization. We have some clever storage ideas for small kitchens to share.

A Few Clever Storage Ideas for Small Kitchens

When you have limited space, you have to make every inch of it count. The kitchen can be a fun place to do this. It is full of nooks and crannies where you can wedge things in and surfaces to hang things on. With a little creativity and maybe a dose of whimsy, you can do a lot with a small kitchen.

It’s easy to end up with too much in your kitchen, if you don’t store it right. Your kitchen can feel overstuffed and crowded, even with only one person in it. That’s when you know you need a better storage system. Something classy. Maybe a little snazzy. More to the point, it needs to be reliable.

Equally importantly, you have to make sure you are truly optimizing your use of space. Take a look in your pantry. If you see empty space, items in the corners you can’t reach and others jumbled up in piles ready to fall to the floor, don’t despair. Learn to see those things as opportunities to organize and generate new storage ideas for your small kitchen’s pantry. Here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

Customized, adjustable shelving. Strong, solid pantry shelves that can be positioned as you need them will make a huge difference in your storage capacity. You want to fill every inch of that pantry, from floor to ceiling, putting the things you use the most right in front of you with less important items fanning out toward the edges. Group like-sized items together as much as possible, and leave just enough room on top to reach in, placing the next shelf above that. It’ll look lovely and be a pleasure to use.

Chrome pull-out baskets. Some things are just not meant to live on shelves. Fresh fruits and vegetables store much better in wire baskets located below pantry shelves. Baskets are also ideal for storing bulk purchases, kids’ snacks, and other sundry kitchen items. You can keep some of the odd gadgets and small appliances that you use once a year in the very back of the lowest baskets to keep them out of the way but still easily accessible.

A floor-to-ceiling lazy Susan. Were you wondering what we can do with that inaccessible dark, shadowy inner corner that’s as difficult to reach as it is to see into? Consider revitalizing that corner with a multitiered lazy Susan centered around a sturdy steel pole. Not only will it greatly optimize your pantry storage, everything on it will be kept within easy reach—just a flick of the wrist away.

These pantry upgrades can vastly increase your overall kitchen storage capacity, giving you greater organization and more space in the kitchen itself. You can customize your pantry even further with pull-out bottle or spice racks, drawers, and other specialized features.

Get Pantry Storage Solutions That Will Last

You can get a preview of exactly what a new storage system will look like in your walk-in pantry. Our four-step production process starts with a free design consultation with one of our design experts. A designer will come to your home in Northern Virginia at a convenient time for you, talk to you about your needs and wants, then create an interactive 3D model of your potential new pantry.

When you upgrade your kitchen storage solutions, you want systems that will last. Imagine systems that are handmade to order from the highest quality materials. At Closet America, we make our shelves out of ¾-inch thermo-fused laminate that never sags, and we use metal supports for safety and durability. All of our systems are floor-standing with built-in levelers, and we offer a variety of classic and modern finishes.

Before you know it, you could have the neatly organized, beautiful; kitchen you’ve been longing for—and all it takes to get started is a single phone call. To see how these clever storage ideas for small kitchens can improve your home, contact Closet America today for a free design consultation.

Lead image: Shutterstock