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05.02.10 / Kitchen Cabinet Organization

I’d like to show you 2 cabinets in our kitchen that hold their own…and then some.  And they do it on a daily basis.  One is just to the left of our stove…

And the other is just to the right of our stove…  

Here’s what they each look like opened…

     

The cabinet on the left pulls out on tracks to reveal where we hide our trash and recyclables.  Trash goes in the front can while recyclable items get thrown in the back can.  It’s kinda fun to teach our older son (5 years old) which items can be recycled and which ones cannot.  As for our lil’ 2-year-old guy, I found a dirty napkin in the freezer the other day…we’re still workin’ on him. 

The other cabinet houses all of our pots and pans plus a few strainers and even a stovetop griddle.  The 2-tier shelving unit pulls out on 2 separate tracks to make removing and replacing cookware much easier. 

We purchased both of these organization racks from Lowe’s and Handy Hubby installed them himself.  (In fact, they were his ideas!)  He basically had to destroy the shallow shelf that was inside our builder cabinets originally.

We did lose cabinet space for the trash/recycle system but gained space in the pots and pans cabinet.  To us, it was worth it to get our trash can off the kitchen floor and to designate a space for recycling.  Up until the cabinet organization systems were installed, we had to haul all recyclables out to the garage (i.e. we weren’t recycling as much as we could have been).  Now, pretty much 99.9% of our recyclable items get where they need to be. 

Instead of tearing out our boring builder grade kitchen cabinets (too pricey for us) we’ve decided to tweak them here and there to add form and function.  Check in later this week to see how we customized another cabinet in our kitchen as a decorative (rather than functional) feature!

5 COMMENTS
DIY, organization

5 Comments

I REALLY want to add roller shelves to my “pots and pans” cabinet, but our cabinets are metal and I can’t bring myself to drill holes in them… poo.

Carole
03.May.2010

this is definitely on my to-do list…didn’t know they had stuff like that at Lowe’s. I priced out similar slide-out drawers at Container Store and almost had a heart attack.

Just browsed on the Lowe’s website–are the ones you used by Rev-A-Shelf? Was it hard to attach the cabinet door to the slider? (full of q’s today!)

housetweaking
03.May.2010

Carole – The ones we used are Rev-A-Shelf although we did this a few years ago so not sure if the particular models we have are still available but you should be able to find something similar. The trash/recycle bin pull out was waaay more pricey than the pots/pans slider but it was worth it to us to get our eyesore trash can off the floor and make space for recycling. Handy Hubby attached the slider to the door himself (I had no part in it!), so I’ll ask him to comment here about it. I don’t remember him having any problems. Hope that helps you out!

Handy Hubby
04.May.2010

Carole – as Dana mentioned both are Rev-A-Shelf sliders. And I believe both models are still available. They’re expensive (about $60 to $100 per cabinet … depending on the size), but you’ll thank yourself every time you use them. Installation was very simple. It was a matter of, in our case removing the inner shelf, drilling a couple holes and installing. The trash can slider is the only one with the option to attach the cabinet door. There are additional brackets for about $25 you need to get. Then just remove the hinges from the door, use the supplied double-sided tape to place the door, mark the holes, drill and screw the brackets on. Not bad at all.

Oonafey – If you didn’t want to drill into your metal cabinets, I wonder if you could use some industrial magnets to hold the shelving in place. The shelves are single units that just sit inside the cabinet. As long as you could hold it in there, it seems like it would work.

carole
04.May.2010

Thanks to both of you for the information, I’m going to take some measurements this afternoon!

we have a new puppy, and it’d be nice to have the trash bin off the floor and tucked away in a cabinet. I might be able to use two cabinets, so that I could separate my recyclables in one and have a single one for the trash. It’s lovely to have cupboard space to spare, what a luxury!