I think one consideration is that some items may be prone to creating a big mess if they are stored horizontally and aren't sealed well. For ex., what if your cornmeal (or powdered milk, or confectioner's sugar, etc) wasn't quite fully sealed and was placed horizontally. It may not be noticeable at first--until you find those darn little sugar ants marching around in your pantry, w/ their line leading right from your seeping bag. Or what about a bottle of pancake syrup, once it's been opened?

Also, it seems like it would make it almost impossible to view the items that were stored higher than eye level...

The more I think about it, I'm with you, romarc--I don't think it would be the best plan.

I want to do a few canned goods like that - in a kitchen drawer. that is so that when I have a really bad sick day or 2 or 3 I can get to the items needed without a trip over to the pantry. for me that'd be chicken noodle soup and dog food. my dog likes to eat even if I'm sick (silly dog).
in the pantry they'll sit up straight like on the grocery shelves.

does your dh cook a lot? get things out of the pantry often? put things away in there often?

Soup cans are great stored horizontally because they are a relatively uniform size. But once you get into other kinds of items everything is a different height, so it seems like you'd have alot of wasted space. And to echo the point made above, how would you see items on upper shelves?

A shallow drawer for soups and a pullout pantry for other items would be great. Take some time looking through sites like rev-a-shelf.com.

If DH is still not convinced, try taking a number of shallow boxes or baking trays and laying out your pantry items in them to see how it would work. Seems like every time you'd add a new kind of item, you'd have alot of shifting around to do.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rev-a-shelf pantries

Who had that amazing kitchen with the shallow pull-out drawer for cans? It was the same one with the funky handle that looked like a man climbing up the cabinet.

That was loves2cook4six's kitchen. It was custom cabinetry by Ayr in Indiana. Here's a link.

Curmudgeon view: I'm trying not to overbuy food. Are you? If there's a designated space, can you tolerate having it empty or will you buy to fill the space?

We've had discussions here about the "CostCo Cupboard" also, a way to deal with the overage that results from shopping in quantity. "If you build it, they will come" has implications for kitchens as well as the movies.

Also, consider how your buying will change as your family situation and personal aging impact life in the kitchen. People with small children live with lots of cereal boxes and readymade foods, but this ends. Real life follows. And at my place in the scheme of life, I have as few canned goods and readymades as possible; storage of fresh produce is my dilemma. If I were living as my elderly mother did in a house alone, I'd be back to frozen foods and canned goods and restaurant meals, a trap I hope to avoid.

And as someone said above, consider what happens to items that aren't entirely closed.

I am a leading proponent of drawers but this is the one case where I would never use drawers. I agree with all the negatives stated above:

- potential for leaking
- wasted space for odd shaped items
- limited visibility over a certain height

Canned items only drawers can and do work for some. But honestly, I don't buy enough canned soups to fill a drawer! Plus I keep my pantry organized by type of item. I don't want my tomato sauce/paste next to soups next to tuna. Those are all in different areas in my pantry.

This is my own humble opinion but what works best for me is relatively shallow shelving in a closet pantry. I like everything at one glance. I don't want to open six drawers to see what foods I'm missing or where I stored that can o' whateveritis that I bought 3 weeks ago and need to use today.

does your dh cook a lot? get things out of the pantry often? put things away in there often?
Good question.

"If I were living as my elderly mother did in a house alone, I'd be back to frozen foods and canned goods and restaurant meals, a trap I hope to avoid."

uh-oh. I'm trapped!

Laxsupermom, thank you for the link!!! I love that kitchen so much it's enough to make me desert Vintageland for The Country of Contemporary.

We've gotten to the kids-are-gone stage. I have tall pantry doors, 12-inch-deep movable shelves, with food sorted according to type. Works great for us. Don't have a photo of the inside, but here's the outside look. The drawers don't seem efficient to me except for canned goods. I can stand in front of my cabinets, see everything easily, and peruse labels while I think up a menu without pulling out drawers. I also concur that opened or potentially sticky foods would not do well on their sides, and things will be harder to see.