Kitchen, Kitchen Cabinet and Kitchen Drawer Storage and Organization Ideas and Items

Kitchen cupboards, shelves and drawers often do not make the best use of the space in them unless they are designed that way when installed. There are a number of storage items that can increase the efficiency of your kitchen cupboard space by allowing more items to be stored in the same amount of space. These can also make it much easier to get at, store and find the items stored in the cupboards and drawers.

Ideas for increasing the amount of storage and the ease of use of the storage available is especially useful in small kitchens where space is often limited.

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In the kitchen the sink and drainer can often take up an entire kitchen cupboard. Inside the cupboard itself there is frequently a lot of poorly used space due to pipework. Depending on how the pipework is installed an entire shelf may be lost, greatly reducing the amount that can be stored there and creating a lot of empty space that isn't being properly utilised.

With the wasted space often found under the sink it may make sense to add a door mounted bin, especially if the cupboard is missing the shelf as mentioned. This means that the bin is nicely tucked away rather than taking up possibly valuable floor space, an important consideration in a small kitchen. Given that the cupboard may already have space not being used, adding a bin makes little difference to the amount of space available

Kitchen drawers, especially utensil drawers, can be very poorly organised with the contents simply dumped on top of each other. The drawers are often too deep to properly organise everything. Using drawer organisers can help sort, store and make more easily accessible their contents.

Kitchen drawers, especially utensil drawers, can be very poorly organised with the contents simply dumped on top of each other. The drawers are often too deep to properly organise everything. Using drawer organisers can help sort, store and make more easily accessible their contents.

Wall mounted utensil racks can be used to remove utensils from drawers, putting them closer to hand, helping to reduce clutter in the drawers and, in the case of knives, reducing the chance that you will accidentally stab yourself with one.

The insides of cupboard doors can have racks added to them if there is space. This works best if there are inset shelves that are set back from the front of the cupboard as you don't want the new racks to overlap existing shelf space if possible; the idea is to maximise the use of the cupboard, not diminish the amount of room already there. There are a variety of different kitchen cabinet storage systems that can help here.

Pans really do not store well in kitchen cabinets without help, especially if they have lids. If stood inside each other, any lids can be left over needing storage elsewhere and piles of pans are unwieldy and make it difficult to retrieve the pan needed.

There are a number of ways of organising pans. Instead of being in a cupboard they can be stood upon freestanding pan stands or, if you have enough space and your kitchen ceiling is high enough, hung from ceiling racks. They can also be organised in a cabinet using various types of racks and pan stands.

These can be placed upon the kitchen floor or on top of the worktop.

It may be that you need to store the lids for your pots and pans elsewhere to maximise the use of space. There are a number of organisers that can be used to do this.

Inside the cupboards plates are stacked on top of each other. Not only does this reduce the amount of space actually used, as the stack gets narrower as smaller plates are stood upon each other, but it makes it harder to retrieve plates from the bottom of the stack as all the other are on top of them. This is not an ideal situation, especially for good china.

If storing your best china on a rack, it's a good idea to make sure the rack has adequate protection or padding to stop the china being damaged.

As well as plates, other hard to store items such as cups and mugs can also be stored on some of these.

Bakeware, such as trays, roasting and cake tins, tends to vary a lot in size and shape and is thus difficult to arrange neatly.

Tins may stand on top of each other in the cupboard but even those that are the same shape or type may stand poorly, especially if the tins have an pull opener on the lid. If there are a lot of tins then those tins at the back of the cupboard can be difficult to both reach and see what they contain, making it often necessary to remove a lot of the tins just to get at the one needed. Adding tin organisers such as pull out racks make it easier to store and reach your tinned food.

Herbs and spices often come in lots of small jars and packets. These rarely take up the height of an entire shelf and, due to the small size of the jars, are not that suitable for standing on top of each other. Doing the latter has another disadvantage as it makes it much harder to retrieve jars on the bottom of the stack and at the rear of the cupboard.

Various types of Wall mounted spice racks can be used to store spices on the wall if space is available, or alternatively there are cupboard and drawer racks that allow spices to be stored in a way that makes a much better use of space and allows them to be accessed more easily. A small shelf can also be fixed underneath the cabinets and the spices stored there.

Some of these can be mounted to the kitchen wall, or sometimes inside or on a kitchen cabinet. Others fit inside the cabinet itself.

Appliances such as microwaves and convection ovens are often just placed on the worktops, reducing the amount of space available for cooking and preparing meals. There are wall mounts available that allow the appliances to be mounted out of the way on the wall if wall space is available. They will still need easy access to a power socket though.

Kitchen tables can take up a large amount of the floor space available in a kitchen. Buying a table with built in storage, such as drawers, means that this space is not entirely wasted for storage. Drawer organisers can be used with the table.

The kitchen door can also be used to store items. Whether by fastening simple hooks to the door or using an over the door storage system, more normally unused space can instead be utilised. You can even store ironing boards on the back of the door.