Interior design trends come and go, and while you’re sure to want to incorporate some of them into your home from time to time, it’s generally a wiser idea to avoid anything too trendy, as the transient nature of some new ideas means your home can look quite dated quite quickly if you’re not careful.
But, there’s an awful lot to be said for combining style with practicality and we’re very pleased to hear that the humble kitchen larder is now making a very serious return, transforming kitchens the length and breadth of the UK, making it a lot easier to organise daily life while creating a stunning space for lots of fun cooking and family time.
Pantries have been around for centuries, stretching all the way back to medieval times, in fact, so it’s great that they’re now staging a comeback and being seen once again in contemporary homes.
Fun fact! The word pantry comes from ‘paneterie’, an Old French word that takes its meaning from the word ‘pain’, which as we all know, means bread! These rooms were originally used to store certain food products, like bread, as well as other household goods, while the larder was where perishables like meat and cheese were kept.
Even if you don’t have a huge amount of space to play around with at home, you can still get in on the pantry trend by converting an old coat closet or perhaps even finding an old floor to ceiling bookcase and then adding your own cabinet doors… a fun little weekend DIY project!
Alternatively, if you have some dead space at home that you’re not sure what to do with, such as the underside of a staircase, you could easily turn this into a pantry, putting up some open shelves and adding doors, or even just leaving the shelving door-free for ease of access.
What to put in your pantry
A well-stocked pantry can make cooking far easier and a lot more enjoyable, since you can see at a glance what you have and what you don’t. Must-haves for this handy little living space include baking staples like different types of flour, active yeast, baking powder, different sugars, salt, vanilla extract, honey and so on.
You can also house all your spice jars here, with basics including salt and pepper, dried herbs like thyme, basil and oregano, cinnamon, ground cloves and allspice, onion powder, garlic powder and ground ginger. It will smell amazing when you open those pantry doors!
Also keep your grains and starches here so they’re easy to find, everything from dry pasta and long-grain rice to quinoa, canned beans, bread crumbs and lentils.
Once you’ve got your pantry stocked up and you start cooking up a storm each week, you’ll soon see just how invaluable these rooms or cupboards are. You could also use them to house your food waste caddy, keeping it well out of the way while you cook and freeing up even more valuable kitchen space!
