You NEED This Simple Thing To Double Your Kitchen Cabinet Space

Photo credit: Brittany Ambridge
Photo credit: Brittany Ambridge

From House Beautiful

Photo credit: Courtesy of Heather Bullard
Photo credit: Courtesy of Heather Bullard

We all know the kitchen is the heart of the home. And, as a combination food prep area, gathering space, de-facto family room, coffee bar, and storage area, its every last corner is imperative to its productivity. That is to say: You don't want an inch of wasted space in your kitchen.

Luckily, all our favorite designers know that the best spaces are a perfect meeting of form and function, so they've figured out a way to make cabinetry work to its full potential without sacrificing style.

Their secret? Three words: Pull-out shelves. These space-savers fit inside cabinet shelves and divide them into multiple layers, turning what was once one large space—where, let's face it, you've always got a lost lid rolling around somewhere in the back—into smaller, more organizable sections. The best kinds slide on wheels or gliders, meaning nothing is going missing in the dark abyss that is that back corner.

"Pull-out shelves with a low really lip maximize closed storage," explains Next Waver Caroline Rafferty. "You can use the full depth of the cabinet."

Nashville-based Chad James agrees; he uses them in both cabinets and drawers. "You can get extra layers," James explains. "We'll do a sliding top and then halfway down, another ledge. So you have your pots on the top and your lids underneath."

It's a great alternative to the organizational nightmare James describes in most deep cabinets, "where it's just 100 pots and lids in there together."

San Francisco designer Kendall Wilkinson turns to pull-outs for smaller items, too: "To create more storage in a kitchen I love to incorporate pull-out pantries or pull-out shelving to organize spices," she reveals. No more pawing through the spice cabinet in search of the AWOL coriander. Problem solved!

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