Moving One Piece of Furniture Nearly Doubled My Kitchen's Storage Space
Let's face it: Rental kitchens can be downright depressing. Especially in cities where square footage is precious, their layouts rarely make sense—forget the "kitchen triangle," these are more often the "kitchen line against the spare wall" or the "kitchen shove it all in a corner." While searching for a new apartment, I was lucky to find a place with a pretty generously sized kitchen (and no open floor plan, praise be!). But for some odd reason, the owner had lined up all the appliances on one wall of the space, which meant you were constantly darting from one end of the room to the other while cooking.
I'd come to accept the odd layout as one con on an otherwise great apartment, and it wasn't until a visit from my parents that I gave it more thought. When she saw the space, my mother suggested I move the fridge to the opposite wall—and it occurred to me that, despite regular moving around of the furniture in my apartment, it never crossed my mind that I could move my appliances. But I could...and I did, swapping the fridge to the other wall. The result? A 5-foot-wide nook that I was free to play with.
And play I did: First, I decided to wallpaper the space, giving a fun pop of pattern in the kitchen but also helping to visually separate the nook from the rest of the kitchen, designating it as its own mini room. I used a double-wide wallpaper roll, so I only needed to do one strip from ceiling to floor, making it a super easy job.
Then, onto the question of furniture. I knew I wanted the space to be a kind of mini pantry, so I wanted ample storage—but I didn't want to totally obstruct the newly added wallpaper. When my friend, designer Natalie Kraiem, offered to help outfit the space with finds from HomeGoods (where she's the in-house style expert), I jumped at the chance.
HomeGoods generously offered me a budget of $500, which, given that everything in their store seems to mysteriously be $14.99, is basically A MILLION DOLLARS. I was ecstatic to find this wooden shelf—though it's not my usual style, it was the perfect size for the space, the open back didn't obstruct the wallpaper, and the combination of shelves and cabinets made for a dream storage situation.
Luckily, Natalie and I were on the same page about the unquestionable truth that "you can never have too many baskets," so we found a bunch that would fit into different shelves. She suggested mixing in my many cookbooks and creating perhaps my favorite part: the makeshift coffee station, with my French press, Nespresso machine (it's all about options), and milk frother next to a basket full of Nespresso pods. I put all my larger pots and pans in the cabinets below.
One of the more unusual HomeGoods finds was an oddly coincidental one: On our shopping trip, Natalie stumbled across a four-tier shelf that she'd once used in a project. I decided to affix it to the wall and use it to store spices. On the other side of the shelf, I installed a hook to hang tote bags for easy access on the way out of the apartment.
And voilà: I have a pantry. Or at least, a small apartment-dweller's version of one!
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