benjesbride, raebutt (what a name?! lol) - sorry; I'm a bad contributor here -- I used to lurk way too much some while ago but am completely out of the habit now .... My experience - it was actually a really long time ago now and I don't remember well. What I bought though was not "hermetically sealed" - I'm not sure, to tell you the truth, what that means practically speaking. What I bought at first was a whole large bunch of small to huge (and expensive) glass jars with those wire snaps and a gasket about the glass lid. I thought those would keep the air out but it's not so. Or at least those moths got around. As others have noted, they can and seem to "worm" their way in and around jar top threads even. They are so gross I hate thinking about this.... I honestly don't remember what happened long ago. I remember giving up on buying those jars because it wasn't helping. I think I had OK luck with just taking juice jars and screwing them mind-bogglingly tight. But it wasn't reliable and it sure wasn't fun to open those things. That's when I had The Conversation. They recommended Cambro food service containers. I was skeptical because they don't pretend to be air-tight. Again, it's seemingly worked for me though I'm sure the instant I type this we'll be invaded. You can buy these containers large enough to hold a 25lb bag of flour, which I do. I hesitate to confess this here because - speaking of gross - I'm sure many of you will be hugely disapproving of many aspects of the following story. But here goes: we left the country for a year and I left a bunch - maybe a half dozen - of these containers with grains and food stuffs in them, with those trusty bay leaves: not a speck. Again, I swear I can hear those little wings get fired up by the challenge to hear this! lol So that's my experience. As mentioned I did have that infestation recently in rice that was not protected. At the advice of a friend I tossed that stuff in the freezer in a bag, shook it and sieved it (talk about gross) and then since rice gets washed before using anyway, I ate the stuff up. Protein's protein, right?

If you get below freezing in winter, anything stored in that would freeze. This is why a root cellar works. It's below the frost line. Same with summer. It's deep enough in the soil to be cool. The earth modulates the temperature. A plain room with no form of technological temperature modulation will always be ambient temperature, whatever that might be. Insulation only works to keep heat from passing through. In a room with no source of heating or cooling, insulation isn't going to do anything. It will equalize to the exterior ambient temperature. The old Southern homes used "cooling" techniques to let the hot air out of the top of the home and draw "cool" air in from below. But when that cool air is 97° nothing is going to get really cool. It's cooler than the 107° in the sun, but 97° in the shade of the house or underneath the house, is far from cool. And that does nothing for winter. It sounds like what you are really wanting is a commercial walk in refrigerator. In a standard, well built and well insulated house.

I would never use a micro-office, so I'd vote for a larger pantry. and no desk at all, Your mileage may vary -- would you really use that small desk in the kitchen, or are you more likely to use the table or the kitchen island (which you may or may not have)? Personally, I'd use the bigger, airier space, and I've never understood who uses the little desks I've seen in kitchen photos. With a laptop and wireless printers, you could set up to pay your bills, look up recipes, or send correspondence from anywhere, so why limit yourself to a small desk tucked in the kitchen? And if you want a desk with all your filing and peripherals around you, set up a proper office space and don't try to minimize it, IMO.

IMO if you plan to use this as butlers pantry , I agree a good idea, then I would install a sink and use this space exactly like a real butlers pantry ,. Have you foor storage on one side with doors a simple set of sliding doors to make access easy. On the other side a nice set of base cabinets some glass cabinets above for all your dishes you use for entertaining and glassware , liquor and the sink is IMO a must . Set that side up as the service area for the DR and you have a perfect set up and please there is no reason to worry about moisture