A commonly heard expression in our household is this one: “RV designers—They must all be men!” This is frequently heard in connection with storage ideas. Shirt closets that aren’t long enough for a shirt. No hanging space for a dress. Under-sink spaces that are best described as “wasted space.” And the perennial favorite, the RV pantry. Frequently designed with too few shelves, and far too deep. We finally found a way to rework our RV pantry in a way that makes things more accessible.
We’ve seen at least one RV pantry design that really did work. Sad to say, it was in a park model. That pantry was equipped with a multi-shelf slideout that came out into the galley, allowing access to the stuff “way at the back.” On a travel trailer we had, we gave serious thoughts to buying one of these units and installing it in place of the shelves. Trouble was, the engineering of the shelves precluded that—take out the shelves, and the whole structure of the cabinet would lose its strength.
No room for roll-out, but still an RV pantry solution
Then came our most recent travel trailer. The RV pantry, stuffed in alongside the refrigerator, had three shelves—if you count the bottom of the cabinet as a shelf. It was as deep as the refrigerator itself, meaning if you needed something from the back, you’d need a very long arm. The “shelf” height was plenty tall, so that unless you stacked things (and then watched them fall out after a bumpy road) there was a lot of wasted air space. Making it all even more (pardon the term) stupid, was the inclusion of a gray water vent pipe stuck back in the corner.
We thought back to the roll-out pantry device we’d seen in the park model. None met the requirements of the cabinet size and, even if available, they were frightfully expensive. How could we make this RV pantry usable? We know some RVers simply hang out and sleep in their rigs, but we live in ours on the road. That means we cook in it—we don’t just survive on food found at restaurants.
Amazon to the rescue
After measuring all the dimensions of our RV pantry, including height, depth, width, and door width, we took to Amazon and used the terms “cabinet organizer slider.” Equipped with the cabinet dimensions, we found just what we needed. Since the height between the shelves was the same, it was easy to buy the same unit for more than one shelf. We decided to leave the top shelf as it was, and bought two slider organizers, one for each of the lower shelves. Since the organizer couldn’t exceed the width of the door opening, this left us a little space between the RV pantry side-wall and the organizer. As it was, that worked out fine. We slide skinny things into that space like breakfast cereal boxes.
Tension rods keep things in place
In our RV pantry, our slideout units consist of two drawers and a flat shelf on top. As it worked out, there wasn’t enough room on the top shelf to stand up even a soup can. But hey, stacking two tins of tuna on top was fine, and if push came to shove, we could always lay down a can of, say, soup! But what’s to keep the stuff from sliding or rolling off the top shelf? Along the side of the unit, we used a double-bar tension rod, often used in RV refrigerators. The longer rod we extended to go from the front of the cabinet to the back wall. This we mounted at the top. The lower, shorter bar, prevented stuff at the bottom of the shelf from coming off. You’ll see the double tension bar in the opening picture at the top of the page.
While the double-bar tension rod stays put at all times, when traveling we use a single tension rod in front of the stuff on the top shelf. Seems to work pretty well. We hit one long stretch of washboard road that shook our houseplant off the dinette table (it had been solidly planted with earthquake putty). But on opening the RV pantry, everything was in place.
While there’s no “one size fits all” solution here, a little creative thinking could probably help many folks with RV pantry problems find a better way. Installing two slide out pantry shelf units and purchasing tension bars set us back less than $75, and we’re happy with the outcome.
##RVDT2171
Funny you should have this now, I just installed 3 wire basket slide out racks from Costco perfect depth and just enough room on one side for boxes of cereal or soup cans
Great solution. Now why didn’t the RV manufacturer think of that? It reveals a lack of familiarity with their own product.
I believe they leave the space open so we can modify it to our liking. We all have different needs and ideas. I like seeing the different products/devices folks get to modify.
I will say our pantry is nearly perfect in our Winnebago 34T. 38inches wide, overall, ceiling to floor with 2 adjustable shelves in each section (it has 6 doors and divided 1/3 and 2/3). It’s deep enough for a cereal box…8 inches. I organize with baskets for small packets and bins that hold a can laying on its side you can lay cans 2 (maybe 3) deep in these baskets. My spices are in 3 inch magnetic disc “puck” like storage containers and “hang” on a metal plate secured to the back wall. Labels adhere to the clear front of the disc…I can see all 16 “pucks” at once. I use Rubbermaid air tight stackable storage containers for staples.
In our 3rd yr of full time travel and no regrets.
We had the same kind of shelf you show…drove me crazy! When we were at the manufacturer’s for some other work, I asked one of the workers if he could “reconstruct” it to make it a pull-out (in his off-time). He took a look at it, had me show him the types of stuff I put on the shelves, and not only built me the best pull-out shelving, but increased my space by adding more shelves! Love it now!!
A picture of this would be great.
I use clear plastic shoe storage boxes. Put shelf liner then the lid, fill the boxes and they slide out easily on the lid.
We ordered our Newmar Canyon Star without a washer and dryer so we could add a much needed pantry. We provided the specs to a company near Nappanee, Indiana and they built an awesome pantry with pullout drawers of various depths, leaving room on one side for a few jackets, brooms, etc.