Kitchen Storage Closet Ideas: Optimize Your Butler's Pantry for Hospitality

Kitchen Storage Closet Ideas –

Optimize Your Butler’s Pantry for Hospitality

At Dream Acres, we love to entertain. Hospitality is at the heart of our family and our butler’s pantry is at the heart of our hospitality efforts!

We have a little storage closet adjacent to our kitchen and we use it for our butler’s pantry. It’s such an asset to our family operations that I want to share some kitchen storage closet ideas to help you create a butler’s pantry for yourself or optimize the one you have.

Watch our segment on More Good Day Oregon featuring this fun space!

Ours of course wasn’t particularly DISorganized, although in this organizing upgrade, I did take the time to prune some less-used items. However, it wasn’t as dialed in as it could be….and, with all the entertaining we do, I really need this space to shine.

As when organizing any storage space, you must completely unload the space by type and prune your belongings. Read more about that process here.

Once your stuff is unloaded and pruned, here are three storage closet ideas for optimizing your butler’s pantry:

1. Organize by column

We recommend organizing storage spaces by “neighborhoods” by placing like-items together.

In our pantry we organized by column:

The right side (or column) of shelving holds all service ware (anything used in entertaining such as pitchers, serving utensils, not often used appliances)

The left side column of shelves holds tableware (things that actually go on the table for place settings).

In the middle of this step-in pantry, we added a few modular cubbies and created a third column! It is my favorite columnar category: barista. We hold all our coffee and tea service items here.

Instead of having your storage closet be a catch-all, establish neighborhoods within your butler’s pantry for ease of finding and putting away items. Labeling these neighborhoods will ensure that everyone who uses the space will know where items should live!

2. Prioritize lighting

Lighting in storage spaces is often forgotten, but is so important to the usability of the space. If you can flood your space with light you’re going to use it, maintain it, and enjoy it so much more!

In our butler’s pantry, we installed some beautiful vintage looking lights that brighten up the space and add to the aesthetic. When you open the door it is bright and easy to see everything in the space.

One technique that can help bring light to the darker lower shelves of a storage closet is to use shorter shelving boards to allow light to flow through. This is so important because if you can’t see it, you won’t use it!

3. Artful Design

Spend a little time making your storage spaces beautiful and you will actually enjoy using the space! We recommend bringing in artful design to your space and making it like a room of your home.

In our butler’s pantry we hold my vintage tea cup collection. To accent this theme, we added a vintage window pane, a pretty fabric wreath, and some beautiful architectural salvage pieces to decorate my favorite shelf holding my teatime items. When you open the door to this space, these artful accents delights the eye and invites you in.