Hall Closet Turned Butler’s Pantry

I love getting creative with spaces and thinking outside of the box to make my house work for me. If I see a need for a new kind of space, a different arrangement, or additional storage, I put on my thinking cap and play around with a few ideas until I come up with a solution.

Such was the case with my lack of table setting storage in my dining room. I had half of my table linens crammed in a kitchen cabinet and the rest in a laundry room cabinet. Chargers and vases were tucked in other various areas throughout the house. Having everything in so many different areas not only made it difficult to set a table quickly, but also created a challenge in really knowing my inventory.

Now I’m not a fancy schmancy person, but I have always thought that a butler’s pantry would be a very useful space! (I don’t need the butler, just the pantry. Sorry, Belvedere.)

Since adding on a whole butler’s pantry wasn’t possible, I decided to create a sort of butler’s closet using the hall closet in my foyer entrance. Oh, you might refer to it as a “coat closet”, but, here in the deep south, we don’t need a whole closet reserved just for coats. And on the occasion that guests might arrive with a jacket or sweater, little southern girls and boys are trained from an early age to greet guests at the door and ask, “May I take your sweater and purse?” The outerwear and purse are then placed on the bed in the master bedroom. Really. I don’t know how that came about, but that’s how we do it down here, and that’s how we’ve always done it, end of story.

So, without coats, my hall closet easily ends up being nothing more than a place to store the vacuum or some folding chairs or all the bags I keep meaning to deliver to the thrift store. And since that closet is in such close proximity to my dining room (see pics above and below), I decided it would be more useful in housing my table linens and such rather than the vacuum cleaner.

So I cleaned out the closet, removed the hanger rack, and told my dear husband I would like shelving in it. He had a great idea of using a baker’s rack and it works very well! The table items in this closet are just the nicer ones for holidays and Sunday lunch. The casual everyday stuff stays in the kitchen where we have our daily meals.

The top shelf holds tablecloths.

The next shelf holds napkins, placemats, and table runners. I try to keep some of the napkins ironed so they’ll be ready for a spur-of-the-moment use. This shelving allows them to stay pressed until I’m ready to use them.

The next shelf is for chargers, wood rings, and napkin rings. The napkin rings are in the pink bucket trays. The sweetgrass basket (a souvenir from our honeymoon to Charleston, S.C.) holds a large handmade doily my great-grandmother made.

The next shelf holds a basket of candles, a stack of miscellaneous trays, and silverware. I do not own any sterling silverware so there is no security threat in storing it here. This is just some nicer everyday silverware that I want to keep from daily use where it will get scratched and dinged.

And the bottom shelf and floor hold the extras for pretty tablescapes!

What I don’t keep in this closet is my china and glasses because I did already have cabinets designated just for them that work well. Here’s the overall view once more.

Another great feature about this closet is that I now have an out-of-the-way place to hang ironed tablecloths. I try really hard to iron my cloths days before I need them, but I can sometimes end up waiting until the day of because I know it will get messed up laying around with all that goes on in our household days before an event or holiday. Now I can iron my cloths as far in advance as I want and hang them in this closet, away from the traffic and chaos, where they’ll stay nicely pressed and fresh!

I’m finding my “butler’s pantry” to be quite efficient and am happy to finally have this closet set up as a more functional and purposeful space!