Additions to your existing cabinetry
Happy New Year everybody!! Those of you who know me know that I have a small infatuation with organisational storage, helped along in no small way by Pinterest and shows like The Home Edit. Unfortunately most of my ingenious ideas would not work in reality as the labour time involved in fabrication would make the item completely cost-prohibitive and would require many labours of love to make them come to fruition! So I have been researching other, just as ingenious but cost-obtainable solutions for every type of project, starting with small additions for your existing kitchens. Pull Out Tray Dividers: This one has to be next on my shopping list, but they can be rather expensive to justify the convenience of a tidy cupboard depending on which type you choose. One of my bug-bears in my kitchen is my cupboard for cooking trays, dishes, cake tins, muffin trays etc. Bring on the dividers!! Such a great way of storing pretty much anything from bakeware, chopping boards, pan lids, frying pans... Available in a static version in either chrome or wood (around 30€) or an extendable pull out drawer with runners (chrome are around 200€ but I found a wooden one for over 500€ - see my above comment about being cost-prohibitive!). There is an option for every budget. Store glassware on glass shelving: I'm personally not a huge fan of glass shelving (I'm not a big fan of dusting either!), but this storage suggestion struck my interest in terms of reducing the appearance of items, particularly in a smaller kitchen where open space is often at a premium. When you store your glassware on glass shelving, the items have much less of a visual impact than those stored on a wooden shelf, allowing light to bounce through the glass surfaces, creating the illusion of less clutter and more space. Tea-towel storage: Before I met a certain cabinet maker, tea-towels never really had their own space to be kept in my kitchens. They tended to be stashed somewhere, and the one or two that were in use were draped over the oven door handle (and more than once set fire to, but that's a different story!). Since being significantly upgraded in the kitchen department, I now am fortunate enough to have cupboard space with a shelf dedicated to tea-towels and aprons, but I still had the odd towel draped over my oven handle... This started to cause problems when my youngest was born, who took great delight in swinging from it and covering our long-suffering but eternally-tolerant labrador with it! My solution is our decorative hanging rack, situated above the worktop next to the sink (forgive the less than picture-perfect towel below - I like ironing about as much as dusting). You can also find many simple bars that can in installed on the inside of the cabinet doors, or pull out pole systems that attach to the back panel of your cabinetry. Keeping tea-towels off of the countertops and off of the oven doors helps to keep the kitchen appear less cluttered, whilst keeping them clean from dust and dirt... and away for monkey-swinging pesky toddlers! Pintrest worthy baskets: Yes, I love Pintrest. That's already been said, so moving on! Imagine your typical family: parents, children, pets... and then imagine all of their Stuff: man drawers (I'm not even going to go into this black-hole of a subject but it does warrant a mention), hairbrushes, dog toys, random child toys, loose change... all of these things belong somewhere and most definitely NOT in my kitchen. Quite frankly I have better things to do than to take every hairband, packet of screws, crayon etc back to their respective 'homes', so I have a dresser unit with baskets - one for each of us - to hide away the everyday clutter. When the inevitable man/child comes along saying they've lost something: "Look in the basket!". Every-so-often, the baskets do require a sort out, but at least I'm safe in the knowledge that if it hasn't been missed for a month or two it can go in the bin. Drawer inserts: Whilst cutlery drawer inserts have been a normal solution to contain your cutlery for decades, there are also many other options for you to consider: Extendable drawer dividers for utensils, Spice rack drawer inserts, Film foil and paper dispensers, Peg holders for plates and bowls... With the current trend for drawer cabinets showing no signs of fading, you can now store pretty much everything in drawers. This helps significantly for so many people, particularly those with mobility issues. Bending down to access cupboards can be hard for some with knee problems; for this and many more reasons drawers seem to be ever-increasingly popular. So fill your drawers with beautiful organisation inserts! That's all for now, but keep an eye out for Part 2 - Ideas to consider when designing your New Kitchen.
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