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Tiny Kitchen- Where do I put everything?
DH and I recently purchased a 100+ year old home, and we are renovating as we go. The kitchen is 3rd or 4th on the list of projects.
It's roughly 8x8, with very little cabinet space. I have 4 overhead cabinets, and 1 under-the-counter cabinet. I also have a floor-to-ceiling pantry (roughly 2 feet deep, 2.5 feet wide, 10 feet high). There is also storage under the sink, but that's where we keep our cleaning products.
We recently purchased a kitchen island which gives us more storage and prep space (the counters are not standard height and impossible to prepare food on without bending over).
We have an abundance of small kitchen appliances (which we are trying to weed down) and pots/pans/dishes.
Can anyone share their kitchen storage ideas?
TTC #1 since 10.2011
Re: Tiny Kitchen- Where do I put everything?
I have racks inside a lot of cabinets. I store cleaning supplies on the racks inside the cabinets under the sink and that frees up that cabinet for appliances. You can also get pantry racks for inside your pantry doors and move cans and other pantry stuff onto those and free up a couple of shelves for appliances.
Can you hand any of your appliances like your microwave, toaster oven, etc? Anything you can hang will clear up counter space and storage space. Hang a mail sorter so your mail, coupons, bills, etc don't just get thrown on the counters - Pottery Barn has really nice ones.
Can you install a lazy susan if you don't already have one? That's helped me organize tupperware and which tends to get messy and end up all over the place.
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{ For Adam | For Adria }
We're working on building out the cellar rooms in the basement (2/3 of the basement is finished, but there are several small cinder block rooms around the perimeter) where we will eventually be able to store canned good, lesser used appliances, etc.
The first floor is just 4 rooms + a half bath (Kitchen, living room, dining room, office) and there are 3 beds and a bath upstairs. There are only two closets in the whole house (in two of the bedrooms)
TTC #1 since 10.2011
Stand up for something you believe in.
I always love staying in a condo - those kitchens are so minimal yet they have everything necessary to function. I would love to have that, but I accumulate too much junk.
Occasionally when my utensil drawer gets overloaded, DH will "help" organize it by taking out some things. Despite my protest, he just puts them in a box and sets them aside. If I need something in it, I can get it back out. He's right, I never had to get one single thing back out.
You might also have too many appliances.that are trying to take up valuable realestate in the kitchen. I have a shelf in the garage for the necessary-but-too-big-for-the-kitchen things.
If it's an 8x8 room, then do you have some extra wall space? I would get a freestanding "pantry", like a wardrobe full of shelves. You can get them from walmart and such. Or go Julie Child and put everything on pegboards on the wall.
In one tiny kitchen I had, I had a wire grid thingie on the wall to hold all my utensils - kind of like the pegboard idea.
Store things wherever you can - don't limit yourself to the kitchen. We used to have a shelf just inside the garage where we kept stuff like the fondue pot, extra crockpot, the really big tupperware and cake savers that don't get used often. Even now in my bigger kitchen, my really big stock pot stays in the laundry room sitting on top of the cabinets.
In my kitchen I have one regular sized upper cabinet with two doors, one upper cabinet above the microwave, one above the fridge and one very thin one between the two.
After that I only have under the sink area and one door with two rolling shelves in it.
So... I put all the dishes, bowls and a couple pyrex glass bowls in the regular sized upper cabinet.
In the two - one above the microwave and the other above the fridge - I put an alcohol related glasswear and wine opener.
In the really skinny upper I put my glasses.
Under the sink on one side I have my cleaning products, on the other 3 electrical devices.
On the two rolling shelves is where I keep my crockpot, toaster, coffee maker and tupperwear.
Silverwear in the one drawer.
Now the oven has that lower drawer, so I put some of my baking dishes in there, my spaghetti pot and a couple small sauce pans.
I keep my butcher block with knives on the counter along with an old cookie jar my Grandma owned and a square glass (formerly flower vase) with essentail cooking spoons, tongs and such.
Now for the rest of my haul, I put a dresser in my eating area and use it as a side board. That's where I put the rest of my pots, pans, mugs, pot holders and bowls.
If you have the room, may I suggest getting a hanging pot holder? Or some people will use their platters and nicer looking trivets on the wall with hangers. I've seen some people put magnet strips across the wall above their stove and "hang" their knives on them. Knew someone else who had bunches of hooks on her wall and that's where she put her essential cooking tools.
my read shelf:
We got rid of everything we never used. The things we wanted to keep, but didn't use every day, went into the basement for storage until we finished remodeling the kitchen.
One of the biggest eye-openers for me was that I only use 1 skillet and 1 large saucepan for almost everything. That's only TWO pots/pans... this was quite a revelation. After that, there are a couple of rectangular casserole dishes that get regular use. I needed a lot less storage space than I thought.