A small kitchen can feel more restricted when it is filled with a mass of disorganised clutter. Finding smart storage solutions allows you to make more of a small space. Placing your pantry produce in wicker baskets or canisters can provide a cohesive look and place everything in easy reach. A lazy Susan within a kitchen cabinet means two items with exactly the same function, but one uses space better and provides easy access.
Open-front storage shelves on an accent wall will also increase a room’s usable square footage. Paint the shelves to match your wall colour for less visual distraction of the storage.
Lazy Susans
Lazy Susans are lazy susans in that they are born round of wood to hold bottles and jars. Ingredients are easily accessible because none need be searched in cupboards or pantries for use. Great for spices and seasonings as well as vessels filled with oil or vinegar, condiments are near to where a prep area where one can cook or bake. Ingredients are readily available.
Canned food is often hidden in a cupboard at the back and might not catch your eye, or be within reach, so a can rack or shelf riser lifts its contents to make them visible and accessible.
Pull-out larder cabinets, carousels, drawer dividers, risers and integral chopping boards are all built-in storage solutions that should be considered when planning a small kitchen. Essentially, storage can be redesigned so everything is accessible when needed. Consider adding bins and baskets to accommodate those smaller items that would otherwise be scattered across the cabinets and doors.
Wire Baskets
Adding storage to cabinetry and drawers can help keep your kitchen in order. Drawer dividers, bins and rows of shelf risers can see that only the essentials sit on your worktops during the day, ready to be tucked away at the close of play.
Make use of the vertical space especially by adding utensil rails, magnetic knife boards, hooks on cabinet doors or racks hung over doors. Glass-fronted cabinets both add daylight into a kitchen and double as decor, adding form and function in one cabinet!
Matching Containers
Storage and layout are always at a premium in a kitchen, of course, but particularly so with a small space, and matching storage containers can help to bring all those elements together, creating a more streamlined look in your small kitchen (and the illusion that the kitchen space is larger). Wide drawers with dividers are useful for storing plates, bowls and utensils, while carousels, pull-out larder cabinets and risers for cupboard doors also come into use for space-saving storage.
Inexperienced cooks will benefit from cheap storage pots where left-overs can be collected to maintain freshness. / We wouldn’t recommend severe remodelling of the kitchen if it was small. However, there are a number of ways to improve storage without a major venture, and with relatively little time involved. The obvious first step would be to reduce the number of utensils such as cookware and glasses (second step would be to reduce the family size, of course), or tilt-down drawers at the sink to store sponges; or wall-mounted knife-racks; hooks behind doors for mugs and other utensils; and various other measures of this type.
Hanging Pots & Pans
Rather than store pots and pans out in the open, where they collect grease and grit, install them on hooks above your cooktop. They can hang from ceiling mounts or a metal rack over your stove. One option is to mount it directly on the wall, but you could also install it over a pantry door or hang it from the ceiling in a corner.
Hang a pot rack, and you’ve created storage that makes the lids all those pots carry take up no space in a cabinet or on a shelf. A stackable or shelved lazy susan doubles your storage.
You can remove superfluous items from your kitchen to maximise storage space, and use shelf risers to fit more cans into cupboards, having spices stored in jars that slide onto racks on the back of closet doors.
Corner Cabinets
What are the corners in kitchen design without corner kitchen cabinets? They are either principle places of storage or set-pieces in the space; whether L-shaped, pie-cut or blind, these cabinets are vital to the room’s function and flow. Yet they’re an absolute pain in the neck to clean and use.
Kallie Branciforte of I Heart Organizing shares that shelves in corner cabinets can quickly go from well-organised to overloaded, and it’s hard to keep using them when they feel so messy. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by these valuable spaces, consider adding some storage racks or stacking shelf inserts that create useful divisions. Anything that can be contained, rather than shoved in piles that topple when you hunt for the coffee extract, is better than the alternative.
Corner cabinets provide opportunities aplenty; hanging a spice organiser from the outside of a pantry door or placing one inside to organise waste and recycling are all great hacks. Or to hang one inside and add a towel bar to store cooking and baking implements, not to mention resourcefully add utility and style to your décor.