Kitchens: Storage Strategies

As the true hub of the modern home, the kitchen M. presents some unique chalJenges for the war on clutter. The biggest challenge is providing storage for a vast and complex assortment of food-related items, from frying pans and corkscrews to linens and dish ware.

How and where all that stuff is stored is often the biggest factor in how smoothly a kitchen operates. In most kitchens, the storage systems consist of a set of cabinets and a pantry of some sort (if you're lucky). Cabinets hold a lot, but being little more than rectangular boxes, they're not as user-friendly or as space-efficient as they could be.

Making the most of this space requires some thoughtful rearranging to ensure everything is right where it belongs. Ordinary cabinets can use some help from simple add-ons and devices that improve access and visibility of stored items, in addition to bumping up their capacity. 

With all that it's required to hold and do, a kitchen is a complicated room, to say the least.

Space is at an absolute premium, and fitting in all the necessary tools and supplies in an organized manner can be like packing the trunk of a car for a long road trip.

To help you solve this spatial jigsaw puzzle, manufacturers and home centers offer an endless array of products designed for maximizing storage and minimizing clutter. These can do for an overloaded cabinet what a filing system does for a stack of paperwork. And where store-bought products don't quite fit your space or offer the look you're after, creating something of your own design (with a little help, of course) is always a good option.

As you dive into the details of organizing your kitchen, it's important to keep in mind the true purpose of this busiest of rooms. The kitchen is a work area, first and foremost. The more you can arrange and maintain the space for storing, cooking, and serving food, the better it will serve your household. Using the counters as a catchall for mail and newspapers, or the cabinets for storing light bulbs and holiday dishware, only means those spaces aren't available for work on a daily basis. Respect the kitchen as a workplace, and you'll find it much easier to control clutter and keep the stage set for fixing the next meal.

Kitchens: Storage Strategies

Open counter space is worth its weight in gold in any kitchen. Preventing clutter here is key to an efficient work space-and peace of mind.

Commercial kits make it easy to convert a narrow cabinet into an easyaccess shelving unit. The shelf unit mounts to the cabinet box and has brackets for insta lling your own hardware.