Big Storage in a Tiny Space

The biggest challenge with doing lots of canning throughout the year is finding a place to put it all. We don't have a pantry in our kitchen, but we are fortunate enough to have a closet under the stairs in the basement. Instead of leaving everything in boxes on the floor we wanted to create shelving, but the space is very narrow so shelving options were limited to narrow shelves on both sides, or a deep shelf on one.

I've been hoping to find a use for some old drawers I took out of an upstairs room. They are strong and sturdy and seemed much to useful to take to the dump or stick in the burn pile.

The drawers were absolutely perfect for this project. Brian bolted them all together and then to the wall. We decided how to arrange the shelves based on the size jars we had, and we had a built in storage system in no time flat. The only problem is, we plan to can more, and we used up almost all of the shelves we installed. I guess we'll just have to build a few more farther back in the closet, and it will just involve a little crouching to get things out.

Click on the picture below to enlarge it.