Every kitchen has “stuff” to find a home for, especially if you enjoy cooking, love a beautiful new piece of pottery, have to have the latest gadget featured on TikTok, or want to start an herb garden. There is only so much square footage and counter space to be had, so it helps to get creative to add more storage space to various areas of your kitchen. One way to do that is to repurpose and update the way your cabinetry functions. Not only does this give you more room to move, but it can also help make each area more accessible and organized. Here’s where to start:
Assess and Declutter
That ‘As-Seen-On-TV’ product you bought six years ago isn’t going to do anything special for you in the years to come if you haven’t opened the box yet. Look around your kitchen to find any areas that have items you no longer need or want or items that you have too many. It’s always a good time to donate what you cannot use so it can go to work for others.
Decluttering sets the foundation for an organized pantry and then helps you determine what your storage requirements are. Put things together in piles based on what they are and when you use them.
Optimize Cabinet Shelves
After you empty and wipe out all of your cabinets, your next step is to install adjustable shelving. Also consider the use of stackable organizers. These will help you maximize not just the footprint of that cabinet but also the vertical space within it.
Assign specific areas for specific things. That includes kitchen essentials that you use together all of the time or items that provide a similar function. This makes it easier to find and access those items when the time comes. Keeping your spices in one area and your oils in another makes finding it when you’re prepping a flash dinner much easier.
Utilize Cabinet Doors
Have you thought of cabinet doors as a form of storage for your items? They can be. You can mount hooks and racks to the inside of the cabinet doors on most of those in your kitchen. This allows you to hang up items that you use frequently, like your favorite spatula or measuring cups. This helps to free up your counter space while still keeping what you need easily accessible to you, even in the heat of the moment.
You can also use this type of storage for other items, like storing recipe cards or instructions for using a specific appliance. Tack up a chalkboard or whiteboard as an easy way to create a shopping list. Again, all of these items no longer have to sit on the counter but are still within arm’s reach.
Install Pull-Out Shelves
No one likes to climb on the floor to find a way to pull out the item that is all the way in the back of a base cabinet. When you install pull-out shelving, that is no longer necessary and improves the accessibility of the entire cabinet space, even deep inside the cabinets.
Organize all of your pantry items for these shelves. Be sure to create categories and organize them based on their use. This ensures nothing gets lost, forgotten, or expired in the process.
Add Roll-Out Baskets
One thing you want to do is to avoid having items tumble behind those pull-out drawers and shelves, making it hard to push them back into place. For shelves, you plan to place smaller items on and incorporate wire or wicker roll-out baskets. These are fantastic for a wide range of items, including fruits and vegetables, snacks, and other packaged goods.
Vertical space is freed up within your pantry or cabinets because the stackable baskets make better use of all of the usable space.
Make Use of Corner Space
There are often hard-to-use corners along kitchen countertops. You cannot squeeze two appliances next to each other, for example. However, you can incorporate a lazy Susan into this space. For cabinetry needs, do the same thing. Invest in a cabinet with a lazy Susan or pull-out shelves specifically designed for this type of corner space.
Use this space for another set of specifically-needed items, like pots and pans or odd-shaped or large bowls that you do not have another home for just yet.
Create a Customized Spice Rack
Spices are easy to keep organized when you have a customized spice rack available to you. You don’t want to deal with spice chaos while you are preparing a meal, and these types of organizers work very well to keep everything in order.
Install shelves or attach a spice rack organizer to the cabinet door or wall. You can use counter space for this, too, especially if you are able to use a vertically tall spice display to keep items organized.
Make Better Use of Your Kitchen
Take some time to re-think the way you use your kitchen cabinets and pantries. When you repurpose them and create more efficient workspaces, you are sure to increase not just the organization in your space but also are going to feel more at ease finding what you need. These creative storage solutions can transform your kitchen into an organized haven of efficiency.