If my kitchen had as much space as the ones they show, it would be easy for me to declutter it. As it is, the Tupperware space would be 50% of my pots and pans storage space, and the water bottles a quarter of my upper cabinets, leaving only three-quarters for dishes, glasses, spices, etc.
The comments are all great, but the one that sums it up is: “Anyone with room for an entire cupboard of water bottles doesn’t need this article.”
OK, so I opened the article to read it, and see this picture. I would hazard a guess that a pantry this neat and clean ONLY exists in articles and show pony houses. Where are the multiple boxes of cereal? Where are the bags of potato chips, Fritos, tortilla chips? Where are the canned goods and jars of marinara sauce? Where’s all the extra Penzeys spices that someone :::cough, cough::: inevitably buys?
And I’m sorry - someone with these few herbs/spices on their spice turntable? Yeah, they don’t cook. I have a single turntable and a double-stack turntable as shown, and I STILL don’t have enough room in my spice cabinet! (Yes, I know - it’s a sickness.
It hangs down only part of the way, e.g., it may occupy only the top third. So in a glassware cabinet, if you have a bunch of short tumblers, a shelf like this above them lets you use that space.
I might try a few of these ideas. A carousel for the spice pantry and dividers for some of the junk drawers.
I have a carousel that I have had forever, that I was about to toss because the bottles seem to small, but if it fits on the shelf I might try it out again. Maybe smaller quantities make sense now that there seems to be more local options.
My main “junk drawer” is 36" wide and directly under my cooktop. It contains almost everything I cook with (spoons, spats, tongs, spiders, whisks, stacked measuring cups, measure spoons - in a small bowl, etc., even my steamer insert). I originally had a divider/organizer in it when the cabinetry was installed, but eventually came to the conclusion that all it did was take up so much space to prevent me from storing everything I wanted there.
Storing like items on top of each other left to right lets me grab anything I need within a fraction of a second. Yeah… it looks disorganized from a magazine photo standpoint, but everything I need is under my cooktop and instantaneously available.
I am going to take a picture of my ‘pantry’ and put it all out there. It is organized to my specifications and certainly doesn’t look like anything Martha or Pioneer or Magnolia would create. Heavy shelving is meant for weighty items.
Ooooo! The “before” times! A March 2020 thread about pantries that I believe started before “sheltering in place”. We went from two to five for awhile there, and shopping and eating out really changed.
Luckily that’s never happened. I only put rolls of paper towels, light bulbs, my small salad spinner, an extra large Rubbermaid storage container and a hand vac up there.
Well, if they’re hanging off a high shelf, I (as a short person) sometimes have a tendency to drag stuff from the shelf. (Taping the arms down might help, I suppose.)
I use the hanging shelves for containers and lids, small dipping dishes, Chinese tea cups, and in the linen closets, a variety of small items. My spices are mostly in a corner cabinet where a carousel is pretty much a necessity. I have a two-tiered carousel for shorter jars, and a single on the shelf above for taller ones.
