larder dreams

It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. My favorite sweet treat brought home by my hubby, getting into my pyjamas on a Friday night, clean sheets, and anything that is organized. We already know my love for glass jars and boxes of all shapes and sizes. So it should come as no surprise that I have always dreamed of having a larder or pantry. Ohhhh just the thought of all that organization makes my heart skip a beat.

I have been using these two images for inspiration:

The cupboard that we intend to make into our future larder currently holds our freezer. We have a tall larder fridge in our kitchen and a smaller under counter freezer, which we shoved into this large cupboard. Until now, I had just piled things on top of the freezer that were extras or just bigger items. Because we have no shelves in our future larder yet, we were using two of our kitchen cupboards to hold all of our food.

I have already laid out my plans for Alex. Detailing the shelves I want him to build to make my dream come true. However, with everything else needing done in this house, my dreams of a larder are not really on the top of that list. So I took matters into my own hands. Is it perfect? God no. Does it work? For now. Does it make me giddy? Totally.

So here is what I did to solve my immediate food storage issue.

The freezer used to be turned toward the left. It was a huge pain to open the door, then the freezer door, then squeeze my butt in the tiny cupboard, kneel down and then try my best to see inside the dark recesses of said freezer. I really thought it would be too big to turn outward especially because we now have a gas pipe running along that back wall. But I measured and it said it would work. So I shimmied the freezer around. Then, that piece of wood on top? That’s the top of an old wardrobe. I saved it because I figured I could find a use for solid wood somewhere! This created a few inches more counter space on either side, which we really needed.

You can see that we have a good 12″ on the left there which will be perfect for some nice deep shelves one day. For now I am keeping all of our grocery bags and bigger items that are not used often down there. It is kinda wasted space just now, but I can reach down there easily and still use it. We have lovely brick walls in this cupboard too. I painted it white in there forever ago, but it really needs a second coat, but I am going to wait until I know for sure what we will do in here for the long term. One day larder…one day you will be better 🙂

So now it gets a little odd. See, we have night stands in our room that have 3 drawers each. We also had a bed that was second hand and well, broken. After rolling to the middle of the bed every night for weeks and then waking up with Alex’s side crashing down something had to be done. I took two drawers out of each night stand and used these to prop the bed up. Hey, I know it is a little ghetto but it worked! We got a new bed shortly after (hooray) and as I went to put the drawers back I decided I preferred the night stands with one drawer and a nice cubby underneath. I have plans for those bad boys, but that is another project!

Now I had 4 drawers just hanging around. I have seen tons of stuff on Pinterest where people use drawers like shelves and so I figured I would hang on to them and use them somewhere. Well today is the day my friend! When I start ripping things apart with no plan, this is where my mind leads. I threw the drawers on top. Instant shelving.

Ha! Oh and don’t mind the back of the larder door. It still needs to be painted. Usually nobody sees the back of that door but me 🙂

Now for the fun part. Loading all my goodies inside!

Oh my goodness. I can see what I have. I have room. It reminds me of a little country store with small wooden shelves. I know this is very far from my dream. And I also know it will get better once we build shelves and utilize every inch. But this made me so happy. This was also the day before my weekly shop and I still had room once all my purchased were put in. I still have a kitchen cupboard that we use to store the girls snacks and cereal so they can access those things freely. It is the little things! Now I need to start buying cute jars 🙂