To ask kitchen pantry-havers if they are really that great?

We have a walk in pantry- it’s an interesting solution to a structural engineering nightmare in our case and used to be a corridor. It has ikea shelving and is really great. Could do with a bit of a tidy though.

I’m not sure I would have one if the space had a better use and in an old house we had a floor to ceiling food cupboard which was also excellent. Basically the bonus is having all the dry food together.

We have a walk in one, no door. I love the look of everything on show, but we also keep it tidy! I'd never had one until we bought this house (the previous owners had a beaded curtain over it 🤢), but I really love it and lots of people have commented on the nostalgia of it too.

I love mine. It's from DIY-Kitchens. It's been installed since June, and I've rearranged it three times so far, with a fourth change pending.

It's not really tge same aa walking into a room. You have to open a cupboard door to get something out, and it's no more than one step forward

But it swallow up an enormous amount.

We had an old pine cupboard 3ft wide by 6ft6 high, that we painted to match our last kitchen and shelved it out with spice racks on the doors and spaces for different things. It took so much food and freed up the rest of the kitchen. To unpack shopping or get cooking ingredients out you only have to go to the pantry and the fridge.

This house has a modern kitchen but we’re just about to take delivery of a matching tall double cupboard so we can fit it out the same way.

We've had a pantry for the last 25 years (it came with the house), really nice with a window and a cool stone shelf at one end. We use it for deepfreeze, all unopened food (there's a fridge and a cupboard in the kitchen for food that has been opened), cleaning stuff, recycling, and noisy things like the microwave, and things we want to get off the work surface, like the toaster and bread machine.. (Yes it's a big pantry)

Having opened food in the kitchen means I'm not walking back and forth for a tablespoon of flour for a roux, or a dash of soy sauce. Having open shelves in the pantry makes putting groceries away is a lot quicker.

It's really nice to have a quieter kitchen, and more workspace in the kitchen where I need it, and also to have a well-stocked food store.

Though I suspect if I didn't have space elsewhere for laundry, it would become a utility room.

Am I the only one who read the title ad "kitchen party givers"!

We have the same. It's perfect.

We have a butlers pantry, without a door, it's just off the corridor to the kitchen and opposite a serving hatch to the dining room. 1930s house. It's basically a row of fitted cupboards and long work surface. I love it for keeping all the little used stuff out of the kitchen. It has since had the boiler fitted in there, so sadly it isn't suitable for cool food storage. However there is an old storage shed that joins the garage to the house, we are going to convert that to an unheated utility. That will have extra cupboards for food storage. Old houses have such generous space!

We have one. We just blocked off a small corner of our L-shaped kitchen and added a door and a light and shelves inside. I love it. It's noticeably cooler than the rest of the kitchen because there's an air vent in there. If ever we had a power cut I could probably put stuff from the fridge in there for a few hours. It allows us to keep all our long life food and ingredients and all our unsightly clobber like the blender and the mop out of sight. It's great.

Ours is just a big cupboard that the builder intended as a tiny lift/dumb waiter shaft, one day. It holds all the dry goods, vacuum cleaners, vases, ambient temperature vegetables. I would not be without it, but ideally it would be on a north wall.

We have one (without a door) off the kitchen. It has a worktop and we keep microwave coffee grinder bread maker etc there. Plus shelves for pasta/rice/cereal. It's great. Our kitchen looks tidier because of it. However I don't think I'd sacrifice utility room space for it. Better to have one big room probably

I have an original pantry/larder with a cold shelf. All of the dried and tinned goods are stored there, along with veg that doesn’t refrigerate and appliances.
Same as us. I think most houses in the street have turned it, plus the additional under stairs storage into a downstairs loo but I bloody love ours. It's the coldest place in the house in the summer, I have been known to occasionally slide everything off the cold shelf and just sit on it for 5 minutes 🤣
First time we've had one and I don't know where we would keep everything if we didn't have it tbh.

We live in an old house so have the original pantry. I have to say it is very useful - we keep all food in there, along with an American fridge freezer and all the kitchen gadgets. Toast is made in there too! It's also very useful for leaving things to cool/ set when baking and keeping the cats away from them.....

I have an original pantry/larder with a cold shelf. All of the dried and tinned goods are stored there, along with veg that doesn’t refrigerate and appliances.
The only food stored in the kitchen cupboards apart from the fridge is the tea, hot chocolate, herbs and spices, oils and sauces. I’d love a bigger larder though, as it can get cluttered…

I had one in my very first house; it was brilliant, and I would have another if I could. I'd also like a separate utility room.

I would love a walk in pantry. We have a cupboard in the kitchen but the heating manifold is in there, so I can’t store much food in there over winter.

Given the choice I would design a walk in pantry.

We have one that was built when the house was - 1930s. All the living rooms face south, the larder, utility, bathrooms etc are on the north side. So the larder never gets any sun and stays very cool. It's about the size of a generous toilet cubicle and has a wide built in slate shelf all along one side
I'd say larders are great if you want to buy in bulk. I also keep my huge collection of plastic tubs and jam-jars in there and infrequently used kitchen items (picnic stuff, huge preserving pan, huge plate for the Christmas turkey...) and veg such as potatoes and onions. When the kids were little medicines were also in there, on a high shelf.

I got a small pantry about five foot square; the house was built with it sometime around 1900. It has a small North facing window and is always cold if you keep the door closed, so great for storing veg and eggs and cheese and other things that need to be cool but not in the fridge. I like it very much, it keeps the kitchen storage clear for crockery and pans and so on.
However, I keep two cupboards near the cooker for food items that I use all the time: tea, coffee, oil, vinegar, cereals, seasonings etc. I wouldn't want to keep going into the pantry for those.

Another thing about it is that I'm not a fan of upper cabinets in kitchens and having the pantry/utility, with all the storage made it so we didn't need them.

In our case it was partly functionality - it's a listed house and we were somewhat limited in the structural changes we were allowed to make to the kitchen, but I've ended up being really happy with the setup.

When we where buying our house,we narrowed it down to two houses
We bought the one with a pantry-i grew up with one and really missed it
It's a tiny kitchen and it's about 70% of our storage space (the other house had a slightly larger kitchen but not a lot more storage)
It holds 'dry' foods (like tins/packets/pasta,rice etc),snacks,our laundry basket (the one I use to hold the clothes to hand on the line),veg rack,recycling tub and all the bits I buy in bulk (like sugar,loo rolls,pasta/rice and teabags)
I wouldn't be without ours-i love it

if you have DC then yes, a pantry is a most excellent place for hide-and-go-seek

essential in fact

I have spent a lot time considering this as we are totally redesigning our house as due to multiple poor extensions rooms are now in the wrong places.
We are in a rural location so ended up putting the utility/boot room away from the kitchen, but close to where you would return from the garden or a walk with a coveted external area for removing really wet and muddy shoes/clothes.
I grew up in a Victorian farmhouse with a full larder with marble shelves and mesh screens in the sashes so a food storage area was essential. I ended up going for a small room off the kitchen ( not big enough for a sink) , but toaster, air fryer etc can plug in there. Lots of shelves and then baskets underneath so when onions/potatoes good a bit yuck you can replace the basket. Yes there will be doors, but that means I can shut them and hide everything away.

We use the understairs cupboard, its next to the kitchen, It's got lots of shelves and holds loads, I also keep stuff in there like the breadmaker, instant pot, food processor and not often used bakeware

I'd love one...my grandparents had one in their council house growing up and I remember how old it was and how amazing the food was being kept in there ..it's on my list of things I want one day!

We live in an old house almost 200 years old & our stairs is in the kitchen. We have 2 under stairs cupboards. The smaller one houses the hoover & shoe polish & tins of paint etc

We've fitted the bigger one out with shelving on & it's our larder. It's big enough to step into (the size lots of under stairs toilets would be). It has a pull string light & i absolutely adore it! I don't think i could live without one now & it would 100% be a priority if we moved.

My friend has one of those tall pull out shelves that you can access from both sides & she seems to like it.

Thanks to our larder & a separate utility room we don't have any overhead cupboards in our kitchen which works well as its an old country style with lower ceilings so we have free standing kitchen workspaces
Our fridge / freezer / washing machine / tumble dryer etc are all in the utility room