The kitchen is one of the rooms in the home that will house a lot of items. As well as food, there are all of your appliances and then pots, pans, glassware and crockery. Quite often it can be one of the smallest rooms in the home too, so having efficient storage solutions is a must.
If you are able to design a kitchen from scratch, then you need to think about storage. When we moved into our home over five years ago, we renovated the whole place. The kitchen was the first thing to be sorted. We looked round at a whole load of different fitted kitchens and design ideas. Taking a lead in the design of it, though, left us with a kitchen that we are in love with.
If you are going to be designing a kitchen, it might be worth making a list of all of the things that you want to store in your kitchen to make sure that there is somewhere for them all. If you aren’t going to be redesigning anytime soon, then there are still some solutions to help you maximise the storage in your kitchen.
Maximise the Existing Cupboard Space
There are a lot of things that you can buy straight from a shop, that will help you to make the most of the cupboard space that you already have. Some of these things could be cupboard dividers or shelves that will divide the space in half. If you have double the amount of surface space, you can put double the amount in the cupboard.
You could also get some door hooks to store things like cleaning cloths or tea towels. You can get drawer inserts to divide up the space in drawers too, as well as plate racks to stack plates vertically, rather than horizontally. Using a small tension rod (like the style you would have for a shower curtain) and putting it in the cupboard that houses the cleaning products, will save so much space. Hang the spray bottles over the rod and then there is surface space freed up.
Use Plenty of Baskets
Baskets can be used in cupboards or drawers. You could use them to store foods like onions, tinned foods or your bags of pasta and spaghetti. If you have a drawer in your kitchen that has several random things in, then use a basket. If you can put everything in one place, it will free up storage space in that cupboard or drawer, for other things.
Work the Space on Top of Cabinets
A lot of older style kitchens have quite small top cabinets, meaning there is a lot of space left on top of them. Using some baskets that match and fit, you could put them on top of the cabinets to make the most of the space up there. Using the baskets or some boxes, will make the space look a lot neater, than just putting a few appliances or food storage up there.
Think about Shelving
If you think about what spare wall space is in the kitchen, you could put up some shelving. You could also put up shelving on the outside space of some of the cabinets. The top cabinets work better for this in my experience (but then again, I do have two small children that like to grab and pull down everything)!
Declutter & Reorganise
If you are only going to do one thing in your kitchen then have a sort and a bit of a clear out. Do you ever use that toastie maker or that hand blender? Think about the things that you could get rid of. Once you have done that, reorganise your cupboards so they are tidier and easier to use.
Having a declutter of the worktops is a great idea to make your kitchen look more spacious too. If there is more empty space on the worktop, it looks bigger. Do all of the cookbooks need to be on display? Could you put the coffee jar in a cupboard? Just have a look at it all and declutter the worktops.
What are your top tips for making space in the kitchen?
*collaboration
Great post, I have loads of baskets, boxes and glass jars in my kitchen for storage and not only do they look good, they make it all nice and tidy too!
Steph Oakes recently posted…We’re Geronimo Festival Ambassadors!
Great tips! Our kitchen is quite small anyway, so we’re lacking space as it is. It’s just full of clutter from when we moved and we’ve not had chance to sort it yet! Thank you for sharing 🙂 x
Im slightly obsessed with storage and my kitchen i practically live in it!! i had a huge declutter beg of this month and it felt amazing! i love the jars and baskets def gives that added homey feel! thanks for sharing 🙂
Claire Witt recently posted…Lechuza Ice Blue Cubico 22 Review & GIVEAWAY!!!
Oh I wish we could re-do our kitchen, sadly because of the layout of our flat we are unable to do anything to it. It’s so badly designed with no storage at all. I would definitely add more shelves, use baskets and make my cupboards lower as the ones we have are so high up I can’t reach into them without using a step!
Some great tips here! Our kitchen is quite big, but it doesn’t seem to have any space to put all of our stuff, it really needs reorganising! I think shelves would be a great idea of us x
BloggerMummyLauren recently posted…Writing Everyday – Overcoming The Fear
I love this! We’re getting ours done just now and I’m excited to let loose on the organising front! x
Pamela | Life With Munchers recently posted…What I’m Loving Lately – January ’16
We have loads of cupboard space but no surface space. I love the idea of shelves in the kitchen to house the tea and coffee bits, as well as some select cooking books! And the bin – I love the picture above of the bin in the drawer!! Ours is a plastic bag on the door….
Laura @ Life with Baby Kicks recently posted…10 Things You Didn’t Know About Me
Great tips, I really need to sort our cupboards out and use some dividers and boxes etc to organise them better xx
Hannah Budding Smiles recently posted…Hello Third Trimester!
Great tips! I hate out kitchen its rubbish for storage! I can’t wait to own my own someday so I can design it exactly how I want with lots of cupboard space and handy drawers.