pantry, advice needed

[MamaChris]

our kitchen is not overly small, but no wall space (windows/doors everywhere) so little storage. we do have a large-ish pantry - a cupboard that goes back under the stairs. about 2' 4" deep x 4' 6" long (2' 4" with near full height ceiling before the slope starts). the door is on the long side, under the full height bit.

at the moment the shelves in there are rubbish. very shallow and close together. you can walk in and use the full length, but as you can't get more than 2 tins deep on a shelf it doesn't seem to hold as much as it should.

I can't decide between putting good deep well spaced shelves in the bit accessible from the doorway and not use the long sloped part, or to put half depth shelves in the full height bit in order to be able to step into the cupboard and reach into the sloped bit (so L shaped shelves). Anyone have an opinion?

Deep shelves are less useful than you might think - things just get lost at the back. Stick to slimmer ones, then you can see what you've got without sorting through loads of stuff. Can you put something like a spice rack on the back of the door?

good point re deep shelves. and great idea about back of door - spice rack type things could contain spices, sauce jars etc :)

With deepish shelves could you put baskets on them so you can pull them out iyswim? So maybe narrower shelves in front of you - stuff you want to get to first and quickly, then deeper shelves in the bit to the side?

Then you're using all the space, but in different ways, and should still be able to see what you've got.

I tend to bulk buy when I see bargains, so for instance I always have stores of things like tinned tomatoes and pasta, so I'd group these in the baskets. So the stuff at the back doesn't get lost - I know it's just more of the same.