Fancy pants pantries

Why do staged pantries have at least three of everything? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way. I realize that people selling you storage items fill them with multiples of something so it looks neater. Like I have room for six bottles of Perrier in a wicker basket on my shelf at all times. 

What set me off is one of the latest promo e-mails from a mega organized container living colossus, urging me to Shop This Perfect Pantry Space. The Perfect Pantry Space has room for multiples of everything, all in neat baskets spaced just-so apart. Note that those baskets are placed apart, as in there are actual gaps on shelves. On purpose. As if anyone has enough room for gaps between anything on a shelf and doesn’t stack things higher and deeper, wedged in as much as humanly possible.

In Perfect Pantry World, anything that comes in a nice, rectangular stackable box is transferred to a set of see-through storage containers so you can see that you’ve got fancy spiral pasta, because otherwise how would you know by looking at the box labeled fancy spiral pasta? Apparently you also transfer your Oreos to transparent storage in which you have neatly stacked them. And even though you can see them, you somehow still have Oreos.

Many of those clear storage devices are round. Because round is always an efficient use of a rectangular space, right? But that’s OK, because they’re spaced apart just-so anyway.

Apparently in Perfect Pantry World, we also label our food, because flour and sugar in clear canisters are evidently not recognizable otherwise.

What I really want of course, is a real pantry, not a corner rotary unit where objects like to self-eject off into the least accessible crannies. I grew up with walk-in pantries, and have been coping badly ever since. Well, what I really, really want is a butler's pantry. And what I really, really, really want is the butler's pantry at Glensheen, which should please even the most fastidious of butlers.

In the meantime, the pantry paraphernalia at the big box store is 15 percent off. But at this point, I know that buying more stuff to put other stuff in doesn't solve the ultimate problem: I buy too much stuff for my space, which doesn't match my ambitions. Rant mode off.