"NO WIRE SHELVING!"

 Quick - name what famous book/movie that had the above paraphrased line in it?  I have a feeling you will all know that answer.

This post is brought to you courtesy of Kari, who mentioned in the comments of my last post that her pantry has wire shelving and hinted at the fact she didn't like it. Me too, Kari, me too.  I hate it.

I imagine a great majority of us have that wire shelving tucked away into our pantries, closets and garages.  I also imagine that a great majority of us despise that wire shelving for many reasons.

Things fall through the slats, clothes that are stacked on them get "dents," most of the organizers sold are also wire shelving and they can't sit properly ON wire shelving, etc. - the list is endless.  But, here's why we all have them - they are cheaper than using wood.

A couple of years ago - not quite back at the beginning of the pandemic - I must have been cleaning out that stupid pantry once again and got fed up with the whole wire shelves experience and went about finding a solution.  My first thought was wood shelves.  That idea was quickly discarded.  Then I wondered about having planks cut to sit on top of the wire shelves.  But that idea was also quickly tossed.  The expense, and figuring out how to cut the wood to fit, etc.

After much pondering (yes, I spend quite a bit of my time pondering on little annoyances and how to fix them, if you were wondering), I finally hit upon the perfect solution (which I meant to blog about back then; but....life goes on and it must have slipped my mind).  I ordered some foam board and extra blades for the box cutter for curbside delivery.  I figured if this makeshift "fix" didn't work at least I wasn't out of a ton of money.

(As an aside - I LOVE curbside delivery and I hope it never, ever goes away.)

Once I got the board home, I set about measuring each shelf and cutting the foam board to fit.  And yes, those extra blades for the box cutter are necessary because that foam board will dull the blade a lot sooner than you think.  I know this because I ended up needing to order more blades.

Because of the length of the shelves, I used packing tape to keep the panels together and everything fit snugly in the "lip" of the shelves.  So nothing could shift.

And it all worked perfectly.  And, shockingly, that makeshift "fix" is still holding up a couple of years later.  And every time I have to reorganize that pantry (which is like laundry; never ending), I am so pleased that I have a steady, sturdy surface to work with.

So there you go - an easy and inexpensive fix to those dumb wire shelves.  Do you spend as much time as I do trying to figure out how to fix those nagging, little issues that plague you as much as I do?  (I doubt it)