Let’s quickly review the state of play:
Now, I’m going to start getting into the weeds in each room. I’m beginning with the smallest, but in many ways most significant, because it’s the one room we added on to the house’s original footprint: the pantry. Other people might prefer to add a walk-in closet or another bedroom, but having lived for decades in a city where storage is at a premium, ensuring that we had a dedicated spot for our sundries and snacks (and more) felt like a long awaited dream.
Also: I have a longtime love of pantries. My great-grandmother’s pantry was in the attic above her kitchen (not the ideal location, but the only space she had in her tiny house). The sound of her climbing the squeaky wood ladder signaled that a jar of homemade strawberry jam or tangy bread-and-butter pickles would soon be on the table. Later, her son-in-law built a pantry for my grandmother that looked like a double-wide closet, but when you opened the doors, the shelves were shallow, only about 7 inches deep—which I’ve learned is the perfect measurement. There was no digging around; everything was visible and close at hand.
When it came time to design a pantry underneath an old staircase in our Wainscott family house, I laid it out with my grandmother’s pantry in mind. It has shallow shelves on either side of the door (for cans, jars, spices, and smaller boxed food, like pasta and tomato sauce), and at the back are deeper shelves for cereal, snacks, and dried goods. A taller shelf was made for oils and vinegars as well. What I didn’t realize was that the pantry’s small patch of floor space would allow for a hungry teenager to stand at the center and forage potato chips and protein bars. Our kids and their cousins found this spot to be the ideal snacking cocoon. If there’s enough space available, I prefer the kitchen cabinets and drawers to contain cooking tools and for there to be a windowless pantry (so that sunlight and its heat don’t damage the food) for dried goods, oils, sauces, vinegars, and canned goods. Spices and coffee are my only exceptions, as you’ll see in a future post. Kitchens, if they’re actually in use, vary in temperature, and these fluctuations aren’t great for your stored food. In Brooklyn, where our pantry is a wall unit adjacent to the kitchen, foods frequently turn rancid owing to the heat from the stove.
As we worked through layout options for Ojai, it became clear that there was no obvious place for a pantry. I didn’t want it shoe-horned in. It needed to feel like part of the house. Barbara Bestor, our architect, figured out an elegant solution. Where the layout already bumped out for our dining table, she added 50-square-feet, enough for a small, windowless, walk-in pantry. We designed it to have a pocket door so we could maximize the interior space. While I could probably fill the entire room with ingredients, that would be far more food than two people need. And I had other plans: I wanted the pantry to also store seasonal and less frequently-used cookware and appliances, such as an ice cream maker and cake carrier; lanterns for our patio; drinks, including oat and almond milks, San Pellegrino waters, and beer; and a stepladder, broom, and grilling tools on hooks.
However, our pantry may most often be used as a packing and wrapping station. We shop a lot online, and I want a place to unpack packages, and break down and store boxes so they can be reused. No one needs to see this paraphernalia, so a discreet area in our pantry became the solution. Also, name a woman who grew up in the Martha Stewart Living era who doesn’t pine for a gift-wrapping station. Goddammit, I’m finally going to have one, complete with a pegboard for holding ribbon and tools! To make all of this work, Frances and her team at Reath got to measuring and drawing. I oversaw the obsessing. You can see the full evolution below. First, we started where I always do, with a list: ... Subscribe to Homeward to unlock the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Homeward to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
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Friday, September 19, 2025
My pantry design was decades in the making
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