Coping with a small kitchen

rosie383

Morning all!

We have moved into our new house at last and I am gradually putting things away and organising the place.


However, the kitchen is a lot smaller than my old one and even though I de-cluttered my stuff, my cupboards are almost full and I still have about four large boxes of stuff to find homes for.


There is no space for a bin, so I am going to have to use the cupboard under the sink to house two small bins, for waste and recycling.


One of the other problems is that the top shelf of each cupboard is too high for me to reach except at a real stretch. So I know I can put things up there which aren't in daily use, but leaves me limited for space.


Apart from getting rid of stuff that I actually do need, please give me your genius ideas for space saving. It is a bigger house, three bed semi instead of a two bed terrace, but the smaller kitchen and terrible built in wardrobes upstairs have left me in a bit of a quandary.


I have no internet at home, so will try to get to library again later and look forward to reading all your great ideas. Preferably things I can do for free or pretty cheaply please. Many thanks in advance.

FairyPrincessk

If you have any sturdy boxes left from moving that fit inside or on top of your cupboards then you can cover the front with sticky back plastic and use those--it is usually easier to pull down a small box. This also helps you use the back corner of any awkward corner cupboards.

Consider one or two of this boxes on top of a free standing fridge if you have one--you can keep things like tea towels there.

Consider buying some cupboard door or back of the door storage--things like magazine boxes, shoe pouches or hooks can help.

Do you have room for a pot rack above or a wall mounted knife magnet?

Do you have a dinning room? Can you keep things like large platters, serving bowls, cake tins/stands etc. in there? You may also store dishes in there but it can be annoying if you plate up in the kitchen.

pandamonium

Small kitchens are a bit of a challenge aren't they? I once had a tiny kitchen (you could literally walk in turn round and walk out again. It was fitted with cupboards on three sides (it must have been little more than 7ft square and there was no door to outside IYSWIM). It actually had more storage than many much bigger kitchens.

Search small kitchen storage solutions on Pinterest and there are loads of brilliant ideas. I particularly like the idea of storing foil etc in a magazine file on the back of a cupboard door - my foil, cling film, freezer bags etc currently take up a whole drawer! For me space just makes me find stuff to fill it up with

missyrichards

^ Yes, pinterest is brilliant for this type of thing.

I have a small kitchen and had to rearrange my pot cupboard the other day as I bought a new wok and it was much bigger than I expected.:D

GreenQueen

In my cupboards I have my plates/dishes on a rack a bit like this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corner-Plate-Stacker-plate-stand/dp/B0036L5XRU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1441359150&sr=8-3&keywords=plate+racks+for+cupboards

I means you can use the full height of the cupboard instead of having lots of empty space, or having to lift everything out and then put it back in to get something from the bottom of the pile.

GQ

missbiggles1

There are lots of space saving storage ideas on both IKEA and Lakeland.

rockm87

I made our spare room into a 'pantry' with drinks fridge, microwave and shelving for food. As our kitchen is small and only has one cupboard for food. I also cant reach the top shelves, not that the shelves are big enough for anything more than a few mugs.

mama_bear_3-2

Yup I'm another pinterest fan for storage solutions! We moved recently into a house with a much smaller kitchen than we were used to (10ft long along the wall and a 2ft worktop/island with under storage) and it has actually worked out better and more oragnised for us. In the old house, we had so many cupboards that they ended up getting filled with random crap. When we were moving, we got rid of any excess delf and cutlery and just stuck to having 6 of each plates and bowls etc. Same with cups and glasses (I'm a cup hoarder ) I love to cook so we had a load of gadgety things abd appliances that were rarely used so I chucked quite a bit there too.

So now, we have a large overhead double press with all the plates/cups/glasses and some pyrex dishes and bakeware on the top where I can't reach. The second large overhead press has all of our dried food/tins/bread/cereal etc. It is tightly packed but well organised so not a problem. Our single overhead press has the baking ingredients and some kids things- baby cutlery and food etc. Under the sink we have the washing powder and cleaning stuff and catfood. There is a single press under the worktop which we use for drinks and the bottom shelf for big bags of potatoes. On the island, the large double press has all the small appliances-breadmaker, actifry, slow cooker, food processor and a few smaller things too. And the pots are in a deep storage drawer.

There is very little counter space so there are very few appliances out the whole time- just the kettle, toaster and microwave. The rest are taken out and put away as used.

It all depends really on what kind of stuff you have and how much of it you are willing to get rid of. I was fairly ruthless when we were moving and I was sure I would miss some of the things we threw out but tbh I haven't missed anything and all of our space is way better utilised than when we were in our old house

Edit to add: We only keep the small food waste bin in the house, everything else is brought straight out theback door to the wheelie bin. Would something like this be possible for you? It saves quite a bit of space for us

GreyQueen

I feel your pain, rosie, my kitchen is only 6 x 6 ft and if you open a cabinet, the door comes right out into the middle of the room. Plus the kitchen opens off the living room so one 'wall' is essentially a doorway.

My methods (sorry, some of them have been mentioned already).

1. Magnetic knife rack mounted on wall for knives, scissors, spud peeler.

2. Utensils in pot by stove. Be ruthless about what you keep; seldom used items really need to go. I no longer have a spud-masher.

3. Think about having a bag rather than a bin for the recycling, perhaps a calico shopper hanging off a door handle. Aim to take the recycling out to the bin whenever you leave home?

4. I haven't a space for a bin either, and use one of those black plastic plant pots lined with a carrier bag as my bin. It's light enough to be tapped around my kitchen with my foot as I access different cupboards. A second plant pot lives nested inside it, until I need a bucket (haven't anywhere to put a bucket).

5. Treat the insides of cupboard doors as active spaces. Could you mount a bit of sheet metal and have those magnetic spice jars on it? Also good for information like oven conversion rates/ measurements/ shopping lists. You can stick cork tiles on the inside of the cupboard door and use them as notice boards. Keeps the kitchen streamlined.

6. I'm nearly 6 ft tall and can touch an 8 ft ceiling with my fingertips at full stretch but I still can't reach the top shelves of my wall units or see all the way to the back of them. I have stuff up there is small boxes, stuff which is less often used. I access it with a small plastic step stool.

7. Could you move away from the traditional habit of keeping cleaning materials in your undersink cupboard and use if more actively, for cooking pots or canned goods, perhaps? It's an area not best suited for dry items in case there's a leak. You can keep cleaning materials elsewhere, obviously away from small persons, if you have any. I keep some in compartments of those hanging pocket racks made to store shoes, and I know a few other women who do likewise.

8. Don't ignore the humble cuphook. You can buy these loose for pennies, screw them into a bit of scrap pine and mount that under the cupboards (screwing straight into the cupboard is hard work). Then you can have mugs, jugs and a few other things up there.

9. If you have stemmed glasses, you can get racks which hold them upside down in cupboards, leaving some space under them for other things - plates?

10. If humanly possible, get everything up off the floor and off the work surfaces, as you badly need to be able to use them. HTH.

chaliepud

Is there space in any of the cupboards to create an extra shelf, I find a lot of height is lost in kitchen cupboards. I also have a couple of these.. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0086VIXWW?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00

culpepper

Our kitchen is v small too.For things on top of cupboards or the top shelf, consider a fold up chair to stand on.. I have one that I use for this. It can be used where we sit to eat or folded and hung behind a door on hooks.
I have pan lids and cooling racks hanging on the wall on hooks I made out of oogoo (search for it on instructables).
We are toying with the idea of removing the kick boards from under our cupboards and making roll out boxes to go beneath. The board would then be used as 'drawer fronts' for the boxes.
We have our bread-maker and the big dehydrator in a cupboard in the living room .