It isn’t always easy to make a small kitchen work. Your head is telling you that you don’t have space, but your heart is telling you to buy one more air fryer. So, do you listen to your head and create a minimal kitchen, or do you continue buying cooking gadgets ‘til your heart’s content? Turns out you can do both at once and create the kitchen of your dreams, with a few kitchen storage hacks.
We’ve compiled 11 kitchen storage hacks, so you can make your cooking dreams finally come true. Believe it or not, it really is possible, no matter how tiny your kitchen might be.
Respect Your Shelves and Cupboards
Cupboards hide mess, so we tend to fall into the habit of cramming everything inside them (to “hide” said mess). No one deserves to be terrified of a landslide when they’re opening their kitchen cupboard. Just because it isn’t cluttering up your countertops doesn’t mean you shouldn’t organise it.
Just like the drawers in your dresser, it’s better to be able to see everything you own at one glance, rather than stacking all your stuff on top of each other and rifling through your drawers every time you need something. If you really want to see all your kitchen supplies at once, you can’t rely on the existing shelving in your cupboards. You’re going to have to bring in reinforcements.
Try:
- Buying some shelf inserts to create tiered systems in your cupboards
- Taking advantage of height you have available, without all the excessive stacking
- Using tiered inserts to use up alllllll that negative space you’ve been staring at for years
We hate to rely on Marie Kondo’s advice – but hey, sometimes she’s right. Don’t just apply her folding method to the clothes in your drawers; try it on your kitchen cupboards too.
Have Some Words with Your Tupperware
Tupperware always feels impossible to keep track of, and there’s one big culprit: takeaway containers. Recycling them is all well and good, but it comes at a price. Organising your tupperware is impossible when every container you own is a different shape and size.
Resist the temptation to toss it in and turn away for someone else to deal with. Instead:
- Create a system and try your best to stick to it (don’t worry, we all have our weak moments, no one expects you to be perfect and keep your tupperware cupboard looking flawless forever).
- Invest in a matching set of tupperware. Like boxes, containers are a lot easier to stack if they’re all the same size, or better yet: they stack inside each other to maximise space.
- If your tupperware really starts getting on your nerves… pack it all into boxes, ship it off in a TAXIBOX, and come back to it when you feel emotionally ready.
No judgement here. Tupperware is a headache, but you will have to deal with it eventually (when your leftovers come back to haunt you).
Need less? Put it into boxes and away in a TAXIBOX.
Divvy Up Your Drawers
Who said drawer dividers were exclusively reserved for cutlery drawers? Why are only our knives and forks getting the premium treatment? Spatulas deserve so much better.
Use a couple of bamboo drawer dividers to tidy up your second drawer mayhem. Think spatulas, rolling pins, tongs, whisks, but this time around, you can actually find everything in an orderly fashion. Dreamy.
Got kitchen drawer stuff that doesn’t fit so neatly into a drawer divider? Tryextendable drawer dividers, and make the space you need yourself.
Step Away from the Bulk Buying Aisle
Most people have a habit they can’t shake when it comes to buying groceries (ourselves included). We buy in bulk, even if we don’t need to. You’re going to end up needing all those paper towels eventually… why not buy x100 at once to save money? Because you don’t have space to store x99 paper towels when you only have one on the go at a time. Nobody does.
Ask yourself if the money you save buying in bulk is really worth the inconvenience of squeezing x99 paper towels into your pantry. Buying the amount of groceries you proportionately need can save you a lot of space.
If you do need to buy ingredients that are on the bulkier side? Store the bulk of it out of sight. You don’t want to be staring 5k of basmati in the face when you’re trying to find one can of diced tomatoes. Keep the proportions you actually need within arm’s reach, and everything else at a distance (at the very back of the cupboard or the like).
Rethink Your Fridge
Just because a big white door is hiding all your refrigerated food doesn’t mean you shouldn’t organise it. You still have to open the fridge everyday, and wouldn’t all that glorious food be a lot nicer to look at if you could see everything in there?
Much like your kitchen cupboards, you shouldn’t feel limited to the organisation tools your fridge was built with. Introduce:
- Some crisper containers to categorise fruits and veggies
- A lazy susan or two to help with easy access to condiments
- Labelling to help maintain your shelving set-up
The silver lining to organising your fridge once and for all: you won’t be finding any food secretly rotting at the bottom anymore once you’ve tidied up. If you need to store several fridge’s worth of food while you figure out a system that works… we can help with that.
We’ve got Cool Rooms to help with that.
Get Choose-y with Your Tools
The real culprit causing your kitchen clutter is the tools in your second and third drawers. No one tool should only have one purpose, so it’s time to say goodbye to all your boiled-egg-slicers, apple peelers, and banana dicers. Despite what informercials would have you believe, you can actually do all of the above with a knife.
Don’t give into useless gadgets that are going to do nothing but clutter up your kitchen drawers. Invest in the supplies every home needs, which you’re going to end up using all the time instead:
- A good quality chef’s knife
- A serrated knife
- A high quality frying pan
We can make an exception for garlic crushers (only to save your hands from smelling like garlic for a week).
Charge Higher Rent on Your Counters
It’s a simple one, but it’s the one rule that will make or break a small kitchen: not everything needs to live within arm’s reach in your kitchen. There’s no need for everything to be on your kitchen counter permanently.
Keeping your kitchen counters minimal won’t just keep your your eye line tidier, it will make cleaning up and packing down a lot faster once you’re done cooking. So long as you follow the advice above and create better storage solutions for your kitchen clutter, this will be an easy change to make.
If your kitchen is really tight on space and you don’t have the cupboard space to store all your air purifiers, pressure cookers, crockpots and other whatnot? Make space elsewhere. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice the things you love (frying everything in your airfryer) just because you’re running short on space. Store your bulkier appliances in a TAXIBOX, then get it redelivered whenever the urge to cook a feast comes around.
Need to renovate your kitchen to thoroughly optimise your storage space? We can help with that too. Store your whole kitchen in a TAXIBOX until the reno’s over and done with. If you’ve always wanted an excuse to eat nothing but takeout because you simply can’t cook while your whole kitchen is stored away, well. This is your sign.
