Kitchen

Storage space vs. organization

By August 9, 2019 February 13th, 2024 No Comments

One of the most common requests clients have of their new kitchen design, is for more storage space. We have more appliances and gadgets than ever before and are keeping more food on hand than in previous eras. This creates a problem when more space is needed but not available in the kitchen area. If the kitchen is big enough to support additional cabinetry, more can be added, but the majority of NW homes we’re not built with kitchen expansion in mind. Often we turned to advanced organization to help increase the usable space of the existing kitchen area. Here are a few handy ways to increase organization and free up space for storage in the kitchen area.

Lazy Susan cabinets. If your kitchen has blind corner cabinets you are wasting valuable space. Most homes were built with builder grade cabinets and unless it was an upscale home to begin with, many of the bells and whistles will have been omitted. There is hardware available to retrofit a blind corner cabinet but none of them will give you as much use of the space as a full Lazy Susan cabinet.

Pull outs on the bottom of the base cabinets can help make better use of the space behind what you can see. It’s not practical to have to unload your cabinet every time you want to get to that dish in the back so why not bring it to the front the easy way. Some cabinets could support 2 pullouts or more but as pullouts are not adjustable in height, having too many could restrict your storage space options. One pullout on the bottom and an adjustable shelf above it can be a happy medium between maximum storage space and easier access to it.

A full depth refrigerator wall cabinet can be a handy place to store infrequently used items. it takes a stepping stool to reach, so daily use items should not be stored in a refrigerator upper but it’s a great place for serving trays or appliances that don’t get used often. It’s common to install vertical dividers in such a cabinet to provide a space for cookie sheets and other vertical storage items.

Deep drawers near the cooking surface provide excellent storage for pots and pans as it makes them more accessible. Pots and pans drawers maybe the most common cabinet selection Kitchen & More clients are making today. There are multiple hardware solutions to allow dedicated zones within the drawers, so your dishes don’t