Easy Fixes for Kitchen Storage

It’s the little things in life that can inspire or deflate us. The pantry is no exception. No matter a pantry’s physical size, if its basic features don’t work for you, your interaction with it will quickly become a maddening experience.

Stop fighting with your pantry; show it who’s boss with the simple, inexpensive measures here. Whether you’re building a new kitchen or retrofitting old cabinets, these easy pantry-organizing ideas can help.

Shelve more precisely. It is often said that the best ideas are the simplest. In a world of high tech, the pantry requires no technology to do its job. But it does require some creative thought.

Let's start with low-tech shelves. You know those extra borings you've got drilled into your cabinet boxes that are meant for adjusting your shelves? Bet you've never thought about if your shelves are actually at their most effective heights. By taking advantage of those extra borings and adding more shelves (or readjusting what's already in there), you might increase your pantry's user-friendliness without any further action. "Oftentimes cabinets come with plenty of shelves that get hidden away somewhere," notes Wendy Anderson, design consultant at Dura Supreme Cabinetry. If you don't have any extras, you can order some from the manufacturer.

If you don't know where your cabinets came from, have a local cabinet company fabricate new shelves to match existing ones.


Add partitions. Imagine the scenario: It's Thanksgiving and you, the crazed chef, are forced to delegate jobs to the many helpers who've decided their purpose is to drive you nuts ... er, assist you. You don't need or want help but figure they can at least get out the serving platter for you.

Crash, bang! One of your "helpers" is on the floor, having been hit in the head by the platter he or she was trying to wiggle out of a too-tall overhead stack.

This sort of common disaster can be avoided with partitions. Again, easy solution, big payoff.


White Elfa Door and Wall Rack System Components Rack 'em. If you find that your pantry has turned into a wasteland of disappearing spices, oils and other items — you know, those important ingredients that you were excited to bring home — give them a place that honors their importance in plain sight.

A door and wall rack system makes the most of vertical space with a customizable basket system that can be attached on the inside or outside of a pantry door.


Linus Rectangular Pantry Shelf - $17.99 If you don't have a door to attach such a rack, a much smaller insert shelf can double your storage efficiency for all those small containers that don't stack well.

Make sure the shelf has nonslip legs, especially if you're considering using it in a roll-out drawer. And make sure the items you plan to store on and below it will actually fit there.


Add pullouts. Open-weave baskets on sliders can turn a base cabinet into storage for fresh bulk produce that needs air circulation. Finally, a solution better than those baskets of produce hanging from the ceiling that are always hitting you in the head.


Rev-A-Shelf Products Another convenient pull-out option is a drawer insert, which can be used to retrofit old cabinetry. In this case spices have a dedicated drawer where they're needed most. The shape of this one keeps items in place no matter how aggressively someone opens or closes the drawer.

24 Hot Ideas for Stashing Spices


Go shallower. By separating smaller objects like spices from the rest of your pantry goods, you just might be able to get away with a smaller main pantry.

Try this: If your pantry is located in a 24-inch-deep base or tall cabinet, switch it up. Relocate your key pantry items to an upper wall cabinet in the work area. "Deep pantries offer too many opportunities for small objects to get lost," Anderson says. "A wall cabinet, on the other hand, is only 12 inches deep. While that shallower depth can't hold as much, there's a lot less chance for things to go missing."

If you're renovating a kitchen, consider adding a built-in door rack (they come in sizes that accommodate either spices or cans). Though the back shelves must be made shallower to accommodate this feature, the upside is that the items on those shelves will be even easier to find at a glance.


Don't reinvent the wheel. How easy it is for us to forget how ingenious the supersimple lazy Susan really is. Use one or many in the pantry so you can find what you need with a spin of the wheel.


Wrap 'n Bag Organizer - $9.99 Don't overlook oddly shaped objects. When designing a kitchen from scratch, it's easy to overlook the everyday items that seem inconsequential. Take plastic wrap, baggies, parchment paper and tinfoil. They serve a big purpose — when we need them. Otherwise they're often thrown into a drawer, where their awkward shape takes valuable space away from more important items.

Don't despair; even if you thought your new kitchen was perfect except for this one issue, you can make up for it by adding an aftermarket holders like this one, from The Container Store.


Should you be thinking ahead to a new cabinet design, consider incorporating a sleek incidentals holder like this one. Notice that the lower shelf inside is recessed, so the two components don't compete for space once the cabinet is closed.

Your turn: Show us your supereasy fixes that have tamed your pantry!

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