The Pantry Solution

Before I start today’s post, I want to thank everyone who offered suggestions for our breast milk shortage issue yesterday. You’ve given us plenty of food for thought and some great potential solutions. Y’all are awesome!

So…we’ve got a problem in our house: ACCESSIBLE FOOD.

While normal moms of a nearly 4-year-old are busy trying to come up with “self-serve” food options for their kids (an awesome idea for independence and helping make Mama’s life easier), we are a Food Allergy Family and are stressing out about how easy  it is for our kids to access the food in our cabinets.

Jed is naturally self-sufficient enough to help himself, which I love…but not quite old enough to be neat enough with his foods to let him have free rein in the kitchen. Not only that, but despite repeated reminders that Zac can’t have his foods, he still has a tendency to want to share.

Add to that the fact that Zac can now get out of bed on his own, and has been taught by The Master of Mischief (his big brother Jed) to NOT wake Mommy up if she is still asleep so they can go get into mischief without interference.

I’ve been quite anxious, as you can imagine!

The problem with our house is that we have no actual pantry. We simply have lots of cabinets.

The ones I had been storing food in were the upper cabinets, none of which can be easily locked because of the way the doors hang.

We have one very large cabinet section that could be converted to a pantry…but how to convert it was giving me fits. Every option either would look completely out-of-place (and make the one room I spend the most time in the ugliest in our house) or cost a pretty penny to do in an attractive way.

I was just about to go for the “ugly” option, when THIS happened:

That would be one of our lower, below the counter cabinets, where I stored mixing bowls and baking dishes.

I reached in one day last week, put my hands on a glass bowl, and it shattered at the touch. Weird and crazy, right?

Obviously, I had to empty all the dishes out of the cabinet and clean it thoroughly to remove all the glass.

Once emptied, I saw these cabinets as if for the first time. I had an epiphany: I could store the food in these lower cabinets! They’re huge, and they can be locked!

There was only one small problem with this idea, but it was easily solved.

These cabinets have pull out drawers that aren’t very deep. My food would wind up falling off the back when I pull the drawers out to access the food in the back.

No problem!

Last Friday we bought some hardboard (think dry erase board without the writing surface) and had the lovely gentleman at Home Depot cut it to my measurements.

Sunday I got to work.

First I pulled the drawers completely out.

Then I made sure my new sides would fit with a test fit. When they fit perfectly, I got out a hammer and some small finishing nails, but that didn’t go very well.

Darrel was keeping the boys entertained while I worked (and out of my way), and without someone holding the sides together it was almost impossible to get the nails to cooperate.

So I went with Plan B: spray adhesive and some tape.

I was inspired by partially assembled furniture I’ve bought in the past that had a grid-like tape holding lightweight pieces like this together. Since I had some drywall joint tape sitting in my tool cabinet, it seemed like a good idea. I KNEW duct tape, painters tape, and masking tape wouldn’t work.

It worked like a charm!

First I sprayed the backside of the boards…

Then I applied the tape as tightly as I could.

Repeated it on the other side, and voila! New, taller sides for the drawers!

Then I just slid the drawers back on their rails and my new pantry was ready to load up with food.

Look how much one cabinet holds! And I have another one just like it! Yay, me!

And once they’re closed, these lovely child locks work perfectly to keep the doors shut and safe from mischievous little boys.

Of course, my kids are experts at breaking child locks. If these prove to be no match for my ingenious kiddos, we can always resort to our other option: padlocks.

(No, I’m not kidding. We have a padlock on the cabinet under the sink where soaps and cleaners are stored.)

I had to share this pantry issue today because I’ve heard of many Food Allergy Mama’s commenting on having a similar problem.

Hopefully this may inspire a solution for someone: look around your kitchen and see where you can move things to find a safe, inexpensive way to reorganize for safe food storage.

So far, it’s working great! No need for us to spend tons of money to solve this problem.

Thank goodness!

Jed isn’t too happy with it, since he can’t get to his snack foods without Mama’s help any more, and Darrel keeps going to the old location to grab foods, but they’ll both adjust in time. As for me, I’m sleeping a lot better knowing my kids won’t be able to snag unsafe foods from the pantry without my knowledge.

What creative food safety solutions have you come up with? I’d love to hear any other ideas out there!