Our final project of 2023 was one for the memory books. This absolutely breathtaking home was new to the sweetest family of four. We helped them unpack and get settled, but then the fine-tuning phase took over. This is my part of the job and I was working to fine-tune multiple spaces; the kitchen, pantry, butlers pantry and two existing Elfa closets in the children’s bedrooms. And the goal was to get it all done before they hosted their first Christmas.

Today I’m sharing the kitchen and pantry. I’ll be back again this week to share the closet edits.

KITCHEN

Does this kitchen not send you???

The colors, the wood, the lights, the range hood. All of it. Just gorgeous!

Sincerely a dream!

You think this is amazing? Wait until you see the pantry!

Now, while the kitchen is beautiful, we were dealing with VERY challenging storage. There is actually minimal drawer space to work with on the other side of the island. Not only minimal, but odd sizes that don’t hold much at all. And we need good drawers in our kitchens. Especially if you love to cook and have a variety of utensils, spices, oils and pans. It took me a couple weeks to figure out how to best use the cabinet storage vs the drawers…while still having it make sense for the way they were planning to use and live in their kitchen. In the end it worked out and I had to do some serious space planning and Sam spinning to get it done. But done it was!

I won’t show you every single drawer but here’s a few as an example.

Silverware drawer before…

And after…

( bamboo dividers | knife organizer )

Food storage drawer before…

And after…

( ziploc organizer )

The food storage drawer is an example of the challenge I was faced with. Typically, I’d put these items in a drawer the size of the silverware drawer, but there were only enough drawers that size to hold cooking utensils and silverware. The drawers in the island are about 1/4 the size of the silverware drawers, so that wasn’t going to work either. I had to use a deep drawer for these simply because that’s all I had to work with. Again, we made it work!

If you have a large open cabinet above your oven, these dividers are great for storing items upright. This makes the best use of space and easy to pull down or put away. Their dividers were loose and one needed to be reinstalled, so I took care of that…all you need is a screwdriver to complete this. Easy!…

( dividers )

If installed correctly, they are great for dividing baking sheets, cutting boards and platters. They can hold quite a bit of weight, again – if installed correctly.

On the other side of the island are 8 very deep drawers…

Two of these were designated as a junk drawer and a drawer the kids could easily access for coloring supplies and other things. And to also hold a small quantity of diapers so they didn’t have to go upstairs for diaper changes. Previously everything was tossed into these deep drawers so I made much better use of the space with my favorite, inexpensive multi-purpose bins. Which as you can see fit perfectly!

I created a video organizing these two drawers that you can watch right here…

Yes, that’s music from Love Actually because remember this was completed in December 😉 **By the way, I did see it again this season at the San Francisco Symphony. I melt every fricking time!

Anyway, these bins are inexpensive and work well in so many spaces!

PANTRY

Not going to lie. I’ve worked in hundreds of homes and this could very well be my very favorite pantry. Absolutely beautiful!…

As soon as I saw this pantry, I knew any containment would need to disappear to allow the beauty of this space to be the star of the show. I didn’t want to bring in organizing material that would compete with the natural wood shelves or the paint color.

You can see there’s quite a bit of open shelving and just a few deep drawers. For the shelves I chose a clear container to categorize the food that made sense to stay on the shelves…

( open-front container | tiered riser | cereal container | turntable )

I added a few bamboo turntables for the oils, vinegars, nut butters, sweeteners and sauces…

At the far end of the pantry, I had something in mind. Mom loves to bake and they make rice and oatmeal often. The drawers are full of baking ingredients, but four of these that are used most frequently and have the most volume were perfect to sit on the counter. And I knew just how I wanted to contain them.

These glass dispensers have been on my list for a long time, but they needed the perfect situation to be used. I have a lot of products like this rolling around in my head…it’s just a matter of when they make sense and will in fact work. In this case, they were perfect!…

( glass dispenser )

These comes in 5L and 8L sizes, the 5L is shown here. They are easy to assemble, come with the measuring cup, keep your contents air tight and look so pretty! In these four I added flour, sugar, rice and oatmeal.

I created a video of these as well that you can see on the Instagram account. You can also get a glimpse of the pantry in this video too!

Working in this home and for this family was the best way to end a full year of projects.

I’ve shared links to products throughout this post if you’re interested in anything you’ve seen. It’s great to be back on the blog and look forward to sharing more this week!

xo,

Sam