A wall pantry is a kind of pantry that is actually a large cabinet or series of cabinets in which dry goods, canned foods, and spices are stored along with other types of food products that do not need to be refrigerated. The term pantry is usually used to refer to a small room off of a kitchen that is outfitted with a great deal of shelving to store the same sort of items listed above. Instead of being a small room unto itself, a wall pantry takes up a wall or part of a wall within a kitchen. A wall pantry may be built in to the kitchen wall or it may be a free-standing cabinet.
When a wall pantry is built into the wall of a kitchen, it may be made with standard cabinet doors or it may be made with sliding doors. These doors may be made out of an opaque material such as wood or metal or they may be made out of glass. There are some cases in which the doors on a wall pantry are made out of frosted glass. When this kind of pantry is built into a wall, it usually has one door that extends from the top of the unit to the floor but there are some cases in which the doors are broken up into smaller sections.
In some cases, a wall pantry is built to surround a refrigerator. Cabinets border one or both sides of the refrigerator and may also include a section of cabinets that fit above the refrigerator. The section of the pantry that fits above the refrigerator is often used to store items that come in bulk. The cabinets on either side are usually used to store smaller items.
It is common for people to install wall pantries in small houses and apartments. This is because a wall pantry can make very economical use of small spaces and are also very useful in the organization of small spaces. Depending on the needs of the residents using the kitchen, a wall pantry can be purchased as a single, pre-fabricated unit or it can be custom built for the kitchen. There are also some companies that sell modular wall pantry systems. This means that customers can purchase various interlocking sections of a wall pantry to outfit their kitchens as they see fit.
