Turning small coat closet into pantry?

I did in the last house we lived in ... there were 2 closets within 5 feet of each other for coats ... so one became my pantry. It had a standard door on it and I hung spice racks (from home depot probably) on the inside of that and then the dimensions of the closet worked perfectly for a sturdy plastic shelving unit. I had food items on the top couple of shelves and had my pots and pans on the 3rd shelf and the bottom held some bigger kitchen appliances. My kitchen was painfully small and using the closet as a pantry made a huge difference.

I haven't done this but it sounds like a great idea!
When I had my house built I made sure the plans included a walk in pantry and I love it! I've always said it's my favorite room in my house
It's the first pantry I've ever had

We have this in our house.  It's a short two steps away from my kitchen and I love it.

It has three shelves - on the top shelf I have 3 baskets with seldom-used items in them - one has seasonal/holiday napkins, paper plates, etc.; one has items such as Brita filters, Filtrete filters, etc., and one has football tailgating items.

The second shelf (at eye level) has all our canned goods, coffee, etc.

The third shelf has my bread maker (which I no longer use but can't seem to give it up), all our extra flour, sugar, etc., and a basket that contains snacky stuff.

We turned the closet sized laundry cupboard into a pantry. We have two shelves up top and the rest are deep pull out drawers. Love!

Paige.

When we moved into this house I didn't have any place to put pantry items. We had a large linen closet that we turned into our pantry and it has been great for our needs It's 5 feet wide and floor to ceiling tall. It has two sliding doors On one side on part of the shelves, we have rolling bins that bring a can forward as you take one out. This really helps keep things rotated. We have canned vegetables, fruit, soups, tuna etc. in them. One shelf is for tall items and one is for such things as oil, peanut butter, mayo, salad dressings, syrups, jams etc.

On the other side, on one shelf we keep things like extra brown sugar and powdered sugar, salt, cornstarch etc. On two shelves we have plastic containers about the size of a shoe box that are made to store food in. In these we have different pastas, rice, popcorn, some packs of powdered milk, chocolate chips and other things i use for baking and bread making. On one shelf we keep the jars of home canned chili sauce tomatoes and pickled beets. That's all I can anymore because I'm getting lazy in my old age. On the very bottom I have some bins for onions and potatoes and extra cat food. Since we believe it's important to have a well stocked pantry in case of an emergency or problem that could occur making it difficult to get to a store, we choose to use this space for food. My large pans, crock pots etc are on shelves in the garage that are right by the door and easy to get to.

mine has the Rubbermaid shelves in it. The type that are mounted to the wall and are not solid.

We had a coat closet that we turned into half coat closet/half pantry. It's pretty deep too. We used MDF for the shelves, which we made at various heights. I use it daily and really would miss it.

Melissa

While my daughter and son-in-law were on vacation last year I stayed at there house and converted their small entry coat closet into a pantry. I used Elfa shelving and accessories from the Container Store to add shelving, drawers and bins on the door. They love it and it has helped so much with their storage issues.
   

I think the "how" of it depends on the size of your closet and what you envision storing in it. Personally, in a pantry I like open shelves. Since everything is behind the closed pantry door, I go for the convenience of just grabbing stuff off a shelf rather than adding drawers or bins. But that's totally a personal preference.

The "why" of it though is pretty clear to me. I think using that space as a pantry would take precedence over leaving it as a coat closet. Most of what's in my coat closet only gets accessed occasionally whereas I use my pantry every day.

I so agree. All the lovely pantries on Pinterest are so appealing. But very few are really practical. I'll take function over looks in a pantry any day.

We had two coat closets in my entryway. The floor plans called for one to be an optional 1/2 bath, so that one was larger and we converted that one using stuff we had around the house. Pictures in this post and the next.

Here's my coat closet now shoe closet.