Pantry Shelving Systems Help Fairfax Families Maintain Healthy Eating Goals

A custom-designed pantry can be the positive starting point for healthy change your Fairfax family needs.

Setting healthy eating goals is easy—the hard part comes when you try to restructure your life around maintaining these good new habits. This venture can become even harder when you’re trying to improve the eating habits of your entire family. How do you take your everyday kitchen and transform it into a health food haven? Where do you even start?

A “healthy food for kids” initiative in Fairfax has local families inspired to make big changes in the kitchen. As custom design experts, we’ve witnessed the power of restructuring and optimizing spaces throughout the home and how it can help our clients make new habits last. With a solid nutritional foundation, achievable and measurable goals, and an exciting incentive to start your family off strong, you’ll be well on your way to incorporating health into every single meal. A custom-designed pantry can be the positive starting point for the change your family needs.

Put Healthier Foods Within Reach

This first rule of changing your diet is the most important: make it easy and convenient for yourself to eat what you plan to eat, and remove all temptation of things you’re trying to consume less of. A well-organized and custom-designed food storage space can totally transform the patterns your family has developed around food. When you can no longer reach into the third shelf for those cheesy snacks, it’ll be that much easier to “trick” your mind and body into following the new plan.

We always recommend that families with kids include plenty of pull-out chrome baskets into their pantry design to help corral snack or lunch-making items. And don’t forget to design these baskets to be at or below eye level for their intended users! When your teenager meanders into the pantry for a snack and can immediately reach for a healthy option out of the basket that’s right in front of them, it’ll be that much easier for them to make a choice that you all approve of.

Be sure to store sweet treats and other indulgences up high in a location that’s also inconvenient for the adult members of the household, not just where your little ones can’t reach. Your success depends on how easy it is to get the “right” food items during a rush, and custom design helps you execute your plan with precision.

Minimize Storage Space for Treat Items

The Fairfax County Park Authority’s new vending machine strategy in parks across town involves swapping out items for more healthful snacks and beverages. Within the next few years, the Authority hopes to have all vending machines on board with the initiative. You can take advantage of the very same strategy in your own home by replacing your go-to indulgences with healthier fare, and you can go even further by removing the space those treats once lived in. Let your new pantry design enable your family to succeed in your new health venture!

When designing your new custom pantry, act with your desired food plan in mind. If you want your family to cut down on processed carbohydrates, you can make the storage space for pasta and bread smaller than what you’re used to. Cutting back on sweets? Give yourself a modest sugar drawer instead of the entire shelf that you currently use.

A custom pantry has specialized storage for every item you could need, so don’t hesitate to play with those ratios to help yourself and your family stay on track. It’s a well-established secret in the custom closet industry that if you remove the designated storage space for something, it’s that much easier to get rid of the habit once and for all.

Get Your Family Excited About Custom Accessories

We know that not everyone is as excited about soft-close drawers and custom hardware as we are. But because the pantry is a space that’s used and loved by every member of the family, we know that smart changes here can be exciting for everyone. Adding customized accessories to your pantry design can really bring the final spark to this renovation project and get everyone to buy into the big change. The goal is that this process will give each person the positive momentum they’ll need to stick with the harder nutritional changes that are coming soon.

Take a moment to consider what might make a difference to each of your family members in a pantry renovation project. Does your spouse enjoy keeping a small collection of fine local wines from local Northern Virginia hotspots? Add in a chrome bottle rack that they can admire. Do you have children who love to help out in the kitchen? Give them each a special hook on which their personal apron can hang with pride. You can add in a special nook for your family’s very favorite snacks or a designated shelf where they can easily store an appliance that’s a constant nuisance on the countertop. Whatever you choose, make your pantry accessories fun in some way and you’ll be far more likely to build the excitement in your kitchen.

Witness a Pantry Shelving System Transform Your Health

It might sound impossible right now, but a combination of shelves, drawers, and cabinets just might be the exciting push your family needed to get on the healthy eating bandwagon. With a transformed kitchen storage space, your cooking will look and feel brand new, making it that much easier to get everyone on board with their changing nutrition options. Out with the old habits and in with the new. And who knows? A newly organized pantry might inspire you to take decluttering to the next level in other areas of the house as well.

Ready to get your new pantry installed? If you’re wanting to start your new healthy eating plan as soon as possible, go ahead and schedule a free design consultation with one of Closet America’s design experts. We’ll come directly to your Fairfax home to take measurements and get your dream pantry design underway. You’ll have a sparkling new food storage space before you know it—maybe even before you’ve fully taken the plunge into healthier eating!

Image by Unsplash user Brooke Lark