The Clever Way To Increase Pantry Storage Using Your Kitchen Island

The kitchen is usually one of the busiest spaces in the entire house, with residents making upwards of three meals each day from the confines of the room's four walls or dividers. With the space being used so frequently, it's important for residents to be able to get the most out of what the room's amenities have to offer, which often involves being creative with how you utilize your storage. Homeowners often rely on pantry space to store dry goods they use on a regular basis, including cereal, uncooked pasta, and snacks. But what if you could store these ingredients and others in a more convenient place? If your kitchen is running low on available storage, try maximizing space by adding an island with built-in shelving in order to "transport" your pantry to the center of the room.

Kitchen islands have become immensely popular over the years, mostly due to their ability to generate extra storage inside already tiny spaces. Islands are designed to fulfill any or a combination of a kitchen's five functions: Prepping, cooking, serving, washing, or storing. An effective countertop can cover three of these functions, but what exists underneath can drastically improve the efficiency of your kitchen. Here's more on the simple way to create additional storage space in your kitchen using a multipurpose island.

While many single-family homes come equipped with an adequate amount of pantry space, some smaller units may sacrifice the amenity to make room for space elsewhere. But regardless of whether your home already features a pantry, incorporating additional storage to an area in your kitchen that's easier to reach while cooking may make the task quicker and easier to accomplish. By investing in a kitchen island with built-in shelves as a means for storage, homeowners can quite literally have the elements of their pantry available at their fingertips, placing ingredients they would normally store in a pantry not even a few feet away from their workspace.

The storage that islands can offer doesn't have to be limited to cooking ingredients alone. Depending on the height and surface area that the shelves provide, residents can store dishes, utensils, or anything else they'd like to have available to grab at any time. Homeowners can also store portable appliances, like toasters, rice cookers, or air fryers, as long as the shelves within their island are large enough to hold them. Some island models are even designed with ornamentation in mind, so residents can store decorative items like books, plants, and candles to help beautify the space.

Although built-in shelving is the most obvious storage method to add to a kitchen island in order to imitate the space a traditional pantry offers, modern islands can come with an array of other features, as well, that free up space in other parts of your kitchen. One of these common features is drawers, where residents can store eating and cooking utensils, towels, and any other smaller products they'd like to keep in close reach while working. Other island models have cabinets that mimic those traditionally built into kitchen walls. Cabinets are perhaps the most effective for additional space since they allow residents to store larger items in higher quantities and provide an element of privacy that built-in shelves lack with the addition of a door.

Many houses and apartment units are now being constructed to feature stationary kitchen islands, but if your home doesn't already have one, you may find choosing a portable island on wheels to be advantageous, as you can roll it in and out of your kitchen however you please, freeing up space in the center of the room on special occasions. And if your kitchen already features a stationary island with little to no room for additional storage, try rolling in a bar cart to give yourself extra space when storing pantry items, cooking, washing, or serving.