Step Up Your Storage Game: The Kitchen

Storage is important for every room in your home, but the kitchen is one room that tends to get cluttered quickly. It’s hard to find space to store all of your pots and pans, small appliances, and other little gadgets. If you’re building a home from the ground up, the best approach is to think of ways to incorporate storage right into the design of the home. 

Our ideas for storage options in the kitchen should get you off to a great start.

Deep Drawers

If you’ve been dealing with a precarious tower of pots and pans in a cabinet near the stove, you’ve probably realized this classic design isn’t necessarily the best solution. These days, people are starting to look for deep drawers for storing pots and pans. Oversized drawers can also be a good solution for keeping things like wooden spoons and spatulas upright rather than tossed together in a drawer. This makes it easier to grab the thing you really need. 

Extra Shelves

When the space between the shelves in your cabinets is too wide, you end up wasting a lot of space. Ask the builder about your options for having more shelves inside the cabinets. You might also think about including floating shelves on any of the walls in the kitchen. These could be used to hold cookbooks or decorative items. 

Floor-to-Ceiling Cabinets

You want to make use of every possible inch of storage space you can. Perhaps the best way to do this is by making sure that your cabinets go all the way up to the ceiling. In some cases, you can even have cabinets that extend from the floor to the ceiling. These can often be called 'wall pantries'. Builders might consider these an upgrade as it's more material, but it’s worth the extra money you’ll spend.

Large Pantries

Often, kitchens have plenty of cabinet space to store dishes and pans, but you might have trouble finding space for all of your food. If there are one or two people living in the home, you probably don’t need as much space as families with kids needing more food storage, especially when those kids hit the teenage years. Look for floor plans that include a walk-thru or corner pantry. Walk-thru pantries, in many cases, connect from the garage door entrance into the pantry and kitchen making it easy to unload groceries.

Corner Storage

Many older homes don’t make the best use of the spaces in the corners. You want to be able to stash things deep in the back. Recently, some builders have been designing “corner drawers.” These are V-shaped drawers that sit in the corner and pull out when needed. Others are using lazy Susan-style cabinets. These rotate around a pole to allow you to store things on circular shelves. Either option can work well in any home. 

However, you also don’t have this problem in layouts that don’t have the kitchen placed in a corner of the home. Many modern designs feature the kitchen set in the middle of an open-concept plan. This is often referred to as a galley style kitchen. Some have a corner pantry area. You may find that this type of design works better for your family.

Island Storage

You’ll also find that many of the most popular floor plans have an island in the kitchen. This is a convenient way to open up the space, and many of our customers love the casual dining option of an eating lip built into the island. It’s also important that your island has usable storage. The island is often home to the dishwasher, but there should still be plenty of space to incorporate storage solutions.

For instance, you might ask the builder to include a pull-out drawer that houses the garbage can. This is usually a convenient solution for those who do food prep on the island. Some pet owners like to put a little nook in the island with the pet bowls. This keeps them off the main kitchen floor and makes it a bit easier for your pet to grab a bite to eat. 

Dividers

No matter how many shelves, drawers, and cabinets you have in your kitchen, you’ll find it’s easier to keep things organized when you use dividers. For instance, you can usually purchase inserts that go into the drawers. These will turn your “junk drawer” into an organized place to keep things you might use. The best part about these types of dividers is that they’re customizable. You can purchase just what you need.

Storage is one of the most important aspects of your home, and it’s smart to plan solutions right into the design. As you tour the various available show homes, check out the ways modern homes have included storage.