You can see in the photo our little pantry was quickly thrown up. Now we are facing winter weather in Wisconsin. We realized we needed a better structure. So we bought a small 22 sq foot shed. We posted that this was happening on social media and looking for assistance to install it as both my wife and I are disabled.
The city planning commission found our post and reached out to talk about the pantry. Turns out that in my city, it is illegal to have an accessory structure in the front lawn. A shed is considered an accessory structure.
I calmly discussed what the concept was, what we were trying to do, and that we definitely want to comply with the law. So I asked for what we could do. It took several days to find out that the city has no definition of what actually constitutes an accessory structure from a yard decoration, like a post mounted birdhouse. Since the Free Little Pantry concept is a branch from the Little Free Library, I was able to get approval for something up to double the size and style of the Little Free Library. We’re working on doing that this weekend before temps plummet again.
It was really nice to hear that the city didn’t want to discourage people from doing this, but they had no rules and were only guessing at what was acceptable.
Viewing the social media posts regarding this turn, it has been shared on Facebook over 3000 times. We did get a couple insensitive comments. The worst was asking why we didn’t just “work with the city pantry.” Well, my wife already does. The pantry is only available for about 4 hours per day Monday through Saturday. She explained that and that we were trying to fill the gap in those hours as well as provide time for those too embarrassed to got to the city pantry. Our local news NBC 15, has even been following the situation via social media. While neither my wife or I have been contacted by NBC 15, we may end up on the news.
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