Must Have Kitchen Accessories

Planning a kitchen remodel or building a new home? Maybe you need some ideas on how to maximize your current space. Here are my top 5 ‘must have’ storage accessories for your kitchen, and 5 more that ‘would be nice to have’ to incorporate for the ultimate in kitchen organization and accessibility.

#1 Trash Pull Out.

Trash units usually come with 1 or 2 bins. I recommend 2 bins, one for trash and 1 for recycling. For smaller kitchens with limited cabinetry space, trash pullouts can be housed under your sink to utilize the other cabinetry in your space for other items.

#2 Rollout Trays & Drawers.

These are the easiest to access as opposed to shelving in your base cabinets. Use varying sizes and depths to have the most options when it comes to storage and accessibility in your kitchen.

Shallow drawers are great for utensils, silverware, tin foil and sandwich bags. Deeper drawers are perfect for dishes and pots and pans. Shallow rollout trays are great for canned goods, and smaller food items. Deeper rollouts work well for bags of chips, breads, and produce.

#3 Utensil Storage.

Organizing your silverware, utensils, and knives makes cooking and entertaining easier when everything has a place. Utilize dividers in drawers, or a pull out with cannisters.

#4 Trays.

Trays, cutting boards, and platters are best stored vertically. Storing them in a base cabinet in a pullout ensures easy access. Typically, the cabinets above the fridge or oven cabinet are deeper and underutilized, so storing your trays in these cabinets makes a great use of that space, while also keeping them accessible.

#5 Spices.

Storing spices on tiered drawer inserts keep them organized and visible. No more spices getting lost inside the cabinet!

#6 Corner Storage.

The corners of your kitchen cabinets are the most difficult to access, but there are quite a few clever accessories to make using them a little easier.

Lazy Susans- These turntables make the most of your corner because they utilize the most space. Gone are the days of the plastic lazy susan’s with the metal pole in the middle. Now they are beautiful wood turntable trays that are shelf mounted. These work well in corner upper cabinets too.

Blind Corner Pullouts- These come in a variety of styles and sizes and offer a ton of storage space.

Corner Drawers- These are a unique idea, but I don’t recommend them for a few reasons. There is a lot of wasted space in that corner because the drawers cannot be the same shape as the corner space and still function. Also, with the placement of the handles on each side, you have to grab both handles to pull the drawer out to make sure that it operates smoothly.

#7 Dish peg organizers. Storing your dishes in a drawer makes sense because a stack of plates is fairly heavy to be pulling down from a wall cabinet. Drawers are also deeper than your wall cabinet, so the dishes sit nicely with the least amount of wasted space. These can also be used for pots, pans, and lids!

#8 Mixer Lift. Another heavy item in your kitchen is your stand mixer. I highly recommend a lift if you have the space and use your mixer a lot.

#9 Towel Holders. This is absolutely not a necessity, but if you have the space, it is such an amazing convenience. I never know where to put my dish towels, so they either end up on the counter, or near the sink where they fall in and get wet. The paper towel holder that sits on the counter just seems to get in the way while I’m cooking.

#10 Cutting Boards. This is an old-fashioned concept, but I’ve been getting requests for them more and more, and I love the idea! Incorporating a cutting board into your cabinetry is great for when you just need a little extra space for cooking prep, or to set something down.