Organizing Your Kitchen So You Can Store More in a Small Kitchen
Posted: Sunday, September 10, 2006
by Karen Porter
Organizing your kitchen with these products and tips can make your small kitchen seem bigger. And you won't have to cram stuff inside your kitchen cabinets and drawers. This is just a small sample of hidden storage space in your kitchen and how to use it.
UNDERNEATH KITCHEN CABINETS
Attach cup racks or stemware racks to the underside of kitchen cabinets. This will free the space you're currently using in that kitchen cup cabinet for something else. Stemracks hold stemware such as wineglasses bottoms up by the stem. You probably see these frequently in restaurants over the bars but don't really notice them. You can find a stemware rack for your home that will hold as few as perhaps nine glasses or get one that holds more. Or place two or three small stemware racks side-by-side to hold more stemware. A sliding mug rag attached beneath a kitchen cabinet can hold about 10 mugs in a straight slim line. Mugs hang from the rack hooks by their handles.
Use portable shelving inside kitchen cabinets on the existing shelves. Typical kitchen shelf organizers are white plastic coated wire portable shelves. They're usually rectangular or designed to fit in the corner of your kitchen cabinet. The corner shelves can hold dinner plates and saucers. The rectangular ones are great for holding bowls, cups or cans. Put one row of items on top of the shelf and one row underneath it on your permanent shelf. Kitchen shelf organizers double the space of a single shelf in your cabinet. You may have to adjust your existing kitchen shelves to appropriately fit the portable ones. But in the end, it's worth it.
CEILING SPACE
Hang your pots from a ceiling pot rack. This will free kitchen cabinet space. Ceiling pot racks come in straight bar shapes or you can get a multidimensional one that is a square, circle or another shape. Don't place the pot rack too close to the stove if you're worried about grease splashes staining it.
Suspend a chain horizontally at a height well above head level (so family members don't walk into it.). Fasten each end of the chain securely to ceiling studs. Then spread S hooks throughout the rungs. Hang wicker baskets from the S hooks. Not only will this look decorative but you can keep handy and store all kind of stuff inside the baskets.
WALL MOUNT IT
Install a simple peg rack on the wall horizontally. Hang all of your potholders and cooking mitts from the pegs.
Buy a wall-mounted magnetic knife rack. If you're currently using a knife block on your kitchen counter, this will free that counter space. Magnetic wall knife holders are stainless steel magnetic strips. When you hang it horizontally on your kitchen wall, it should be less than two feet wide. You can use it to hold other metal kitchen utensils or instruments too.
Karen Porter writes extensively about organizing your kitchen at http://www.EasyHomeOrganizing.com. You'll also find these kitchen organization products pictured on the site. Learn to make organizing your home easy.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Is this Karen Fritscher (daughter of Joe and Yvonne) from Metaire, Louisiana? If yes, I am her 1st cousin - Susan Fritscher-Hall (daughter of Alvin and Jeannette)
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