Welcome to Day 17 of my month long series “How to Organize Your Kitchen Frugally in 31 Days”. Every day during the month of October I will be sharing an organized space in my kitchen with you. My goal is to inspire you and give you ideas on how you can organize your kitchen.
If you missed it, you may want to read why I’m embracing my outdated kitchen. It might give you a little perspective on why the pictures of my kitchen organization won’t be “magazine worthy”, but helpful for real life organization.
This post may surprise you a little because I’m going to tell you right up front that this is NOT my favorite cupboard to organize. I do not see a purpose in making a corner cupboard that is deep and can only be accessed by one door. You have no choice but to bury things.
I do not like burying things!
Here’s a visual so you know what I’m talking about. That corner cupboard (labeled in the picture) has one door, but is very deep on the right side.
I don’t love this cupboard, but I am thankful for the space I have, so I try to make the best of it. Is my solution a great one? No. If you have a solution for this type of cupboard, I’d love to hear it.
So, what do I keep in that hidden space in the back? I keep small appliances I don’t use very often, and serving bowls that only come out when I have a large crowd. That’s it. I don’t store things I use regularly in a space that is hard to get to.
The other thing I must tell you before you start thinking I am really strange is that I keep my junk food snacks in this cupboard. What?!? Why?
I’m glad you asked! Confession time once again: I love snacks. I have tried keeping snack foods in a number of places in my kitchen: in a basket on top of the fridge, in my pantry, in other bigger cupboards. Apparently I don’t have enough will power not to buy junk food, but what I have done is to limit the space in which I can store it.
You know how in the movie Field of Dreams (ok, I might be dating myself here), Kevin Costner hears a mysterious voice that says, “If you build it, he will come”? Well, for some reason that’s the way I think of my junk food cupboard. If I make space for it, it will be there!
I deliberately moved our snack foods to this cupboard because it isn’t very large. It’s easy to grab for school lunches since it’s right next to the lunch station, but it’s also small enough that it forces me to limit how much I buy. I know I can’t buy 6 bags of Doritos just because they’re on sale. I only have space for 1 or 2, so that’s all I can get. Maybe it seems weird to you, but it works for me. 🙂
The other thing that might seem out of place to you is that I keep my small cutting boards stacked on the side. They’re easy to get to, are right in my food prep zone, and never seem to fall over since there is always junk food there to hold them up (((blushing))). I also keep my colander on the top shelf. I stack it with one smaller colander because I use both of them regularly.
Tomorrow I’m going to share some of the things I keep on my countertops including my Message Center.
I am loving this series!!! We had a very small galley kitchen when we moved into this house. After living here for 6 years, we finally gutted the kitchen and removed a wall separating the den and the kitchen. I have a ton of space now, but some of the spaces are not being used very efficiently. Your series has inspired me, to analyze each space and make it work for my family.
Thank you!!
I would store my appliances like that. BUT, I am a little disabled, my cupboard like that is UNDER my kitchen sink! Anything I put there I would have to, get on the floor, take stuff out from under that side of the sink cabinet, And don’t forget a flashlight to see what is under there in the first place! Ideas? right now I have NO idea what is there, I put it there over 3 yrs ago and haven’t been in there since. I would love to make it usable….
I have the same problem and same cabinet placement, and I’ve mostly just left it empty or used it for things I should get rid of anyway. You’ve inspired me to try and get some actual use out of it.
Oh, great, Ellen! I’m glad to hear that you’re inspired! I hope you can make it useful. 🙂
Hi Ginny!
This use of space is great! Honestly, if I had a kitchen cabinet like this, it would probably go unused until I absolutely needed the space. Also, I wanted to tell you that the first thing I notice about your kitchen is how tidy it is! To me, that is the most important thing about a kitchen; it’s more important than granite countertops and glass tile backsplashes, which I don’t have either. 😉
Thanks so much for the great tips,
Lindsey
You’re welcome, Lindsey! 🙂
I have one of those corner cabinets on the bottom as well as on the top. and the bottom one is too narrow to put a lazy susan type device in it. So neither are very organized. I am enjoying your 31 Days
Good stuff! I like your thinking about limiting the space for junk food.
I have several of those horrible deep, completely out of reach, hard to use cabinets in my kitchen. I do the same this as you and store items we don’t use all the time. One of the shelves on the bottom, I have to send the kids in after stuff, because I can’t fit to reach in there!
I’m in the process of rearranging my kitchen, and I’m LOVING this series!
I have two of these cupboards. I just got a KitchenAid for Christmas and the only other place that’s big enough to store it is under the sink – which is where my dehydrator and bread machine live, so there was no room for the KitchenAid there. As it so happens, the cupboards are just deep enough to hold the KitchenAid. So I took out the lower shelf, leaving the upper shelf where it was, which was just the right height for the KitchenAid to fit under. I put a plate rack behind the KitchenAid, back in the “inaccessible” space. The plate rack is tall enough to store KitchenAid attachments under it, but short enough that the mixer bowl fits on top of it, under the top shelf of the cupboard. And the top shelf of the cupboard still has enough space to fit other KitchenAid attachments. So that whole cupboard is now my “KitchenAid” zone.
I haven’t yet decided what to do with the other one – unlike the other cupboards, this one has a hole in top, and the previous owner installed a dropped ceiling in the kitchen. The dropped ceiling is connected to the garage, and mice like to live up there. I discovered the hole in the cupboard a couple of years ago when I was storing MY junk food in that cupboard, and I opened it one day and a pile of shredded wrappers fell on me. YUCK! I trapped 5 mice in 2 weeks. So whatever I store up there needs to not be edible or smell attractive, at least until/unless I do something about the hole.
A pretty cheap way to spruce a kitchen is painting cabinets. We did ours a few months ago. My kitchen looks so much better. We had to strip the finish off before painting.