There’s barely any room for you to move around and store your favorite gadgets, let alone hang out there or enjoy the company of a fellow cook. But there are a few brilliant—and brilliantly simple—things you can do to create more space so you feel like you’re working in an expansive, luxury kitchen.
Here are a few of our favorites.
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1: Built in Appliances for a Cleaner Counter
Why is it that a clean, knickknack-free surface creates such inner calm? Getting unnecessary appliances off the kitchen counter can seriously open up your prep space, creating the illusion of extra square footage.
The best way to do this is to install an over the range microwave to get this bulky appliance off the counter and create extra workspace.
This also lets you ditch the compact microwave for a bigger, better model without sacrifice.
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2: Install a Pot Rack Overhead
One of our very best tips for creating space in any room is this—look above! The vastly underused ceiling and overhead space can open up tons of storage opportunities for you. And we just so happen to love the super-functional, commercial-inspired look of a hanging pot rack. Treat it as a design element, like your countertops or lights, and be sure to tailor it to the room’s design style.
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3: Opt for Apartment-Sized Appliances
If you’re going for a full upgrade, think about scaling down your appliances, as this can vastly open up your space. Consider that standard refrigerator sizes hover around 30 to 36 inches wide, 67 to 70 inches high and 24 to 35 inches deep.
Look for apartment-sized fridges, which generally measure around 21 to 24 inches wide. This will free up a bit of floor and counter space, creating additional room for prep and storage.
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4: Invest in Food-Specific Storage
Follow this mantra: everything has its own place. Using labeled bins, racks, shelves and containers can help ensure that you always put everything back where it belongs, which will prevent kitchen chaos.
Spice racks and dried good containers are some of the more basic storage units you can use to revolutionize the way your pantry is organized but don’t be afraid to get creative.
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5: Use Cabinet Organizers
Take a look inside your cabinets right now (pre-organization overhaul) and you’ll see that there’s a lot of unused space between the top of the shelf and the top of your plates, bowls or drinking glasses.
Luckily, there are these handy little things called cabinet organizers that create shelves and platforms within your shelves in order to make use of every single square inch of cabinet space. Layer your kitchen goods for double the storage!
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6: Hang Storage Bins on the Wall
For some reason, the kitchen is like the catch-all of the house, serving as the mailroom, the mudroom, the dining room and the office, collecting random pieces of mail, packages, household items, etc.
If you’re in the habit of letting all this stuff accumulate on the kitchen counter, consider installing some storage bins or racks on the wall to help prevent the inevitable buildup of stuff-that-has-no-designated-space. Weekly, on a specific day, clean out the bins and put everything where it should ultimately go.
kitchen utensil rack with hookskitchen bins wall mount
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7: Use Multipurpose Kitchen Tools
Over time, work on consolidating your kitchen appliances, utensils and tools into fewer items that do as many things. For example, you can replace your slow cooker, rice cooker and pressure cooker with a single appliance or swap out your blender, juicer and food processor for a multipurpose device. Even your smaller handheld utensils and tools can get a versatility upgrade.
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8: Get on an Organization Schedule
Let’s face it: some of us are very well set up to have and maintain a perfectly organized kitchen, but because we don’t maintain it in-between organizational bouts, it gets messy and disorganized.
Keep it tidy and neat by setting a morning aside every couple of days to return everything back to its rightful place. This doesn’t have to be an hours-long task—simply reorder as you’re finishing up dinner or brewing coffee in the morning.
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9: If Possible, Go Digital
If you’re into the KonMari method and find that your cookbooks spark joy, skip this step! Everyone else: consider digitizing all the paper-based stuff in your kitchen. Old cookbooks, recipe cards and conversion charts can be scanned and stuck in a “kitchen” folder on your phone or computer (better yet, file it away in the cloud so you can pull it up from any device).
Oh, and be sure to replace your paper and pen collection with a notes-tracking app on your phone to create a truly paperless kitchen.
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10: Purge and Pare Down
Before you start on any big organizational endeavor, know that you must start with a clean slate. One of the best ways to figure out what you should purge and what you shouldn’t is to keep track of what you use on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
If you find that you don’t use a certain item for more than, say six months at a time, consider donating it. Remember that you can borrow tools from friends and you may even be able to get them on loan from your local library (yep, some libraries are happy to loan pots, pans and more).
other valuable tips:
Inexpensive Upgrades to Make for a Better Functioning Kitchen
Set Yourself Up for Success
One of the most important components of creating a well-organized household, especially in the kitchen, is to set yourself up for success every step of the way. Making small, realistic changes—like training yourself to put things back as soon as you’re done with them or giving everything a very specific home—can help you not only create order but also maintain it for the long-term. The result will be a clean, sensibly organized space that will make you want to cook every night of the week!
Image credit: organize small kitchen by Pixabay
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