Day 9: Organize Tall and Skinny Kitchen Cabinets : Pancakes and ...

Posted by Jules on Tuesday, October 9, 2012 ? 12 Comments?

We have tall and skinny cabinets on either side of our oven. When we had the cabinets installed, the installers asked me how I wanted the shelves positioned. I told them to space them evenly because I had no idea what I would store inside. Eventually, I used the one on the right to store aluminum foil, cling wrap, and gallon size plastic bags.

About week ago, as I was getting some foil to wrap up leftovers, I took a look at the cabinets and realized I had a lot of dead space causing unnecessary mess. It took me brainstorming different gizmos at The Container Store, Target, and other home improvement stores to realize the obvious: I could lower the shelves and store short things on the bottom and tall things on top. You won?t believe the contraptions and whirly-gigs I imagined for those cabinets prior to this revelation.

This is what I had in the right cabinet. At some point in the last seven years, I decided to store more than foil and cling wrap. I tossed the Target bags (?), but kept the mandoline, silpats, and 397 bamboo skewers.

You can see where I?m going here. I thought this job would be straight forward, but the shelves are attached with these plastic alligator-like clips you have to press to release. I had to press both clips on one side and then thwack the shelf up and loose on that same side. That?s fine (not really, it sucked), but these cabinets are deep and I have the arm span of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Getting the shelves out involved tippy-toes on a step ladder, a butter knife, and the equivalent of giving a cabinet the Heimlich.

It was worth the effort, thank goodness.

I ended up devoting most of the cabinet to food storage. That big stack of paper bags has been in our laundry room since last year. I bought a small case of them at Sam?s Club for $6 and use them as snack bags for soccer and baseball games, school parties, etc. The top shelf holds my mandoline and bamboo skewers. They?re sharp, somewhat dangerous, and I feel better with them out of the way. I stole a shelf from the left cabinet to make that happen.

The left cabinet became a catch-all since I never established its purpose. It held appliance manuals and instructions (I knew where to put those!),? random DIY supplies (I knew where to put them, too!), and a few miscellaneous items, like kitchen mitts. I tossed the mitts in a drawer I will later organize.

Now that I reduced the cabinet to two shelves, I was able to store my small platters on the bottom shelf (I use those often) and my muffin pans and spice grinder on the top shelf (I use those rarely).

I so happy with the way it turned out.

New here? For the next 31 days I?m living according to the famous William Morris quote, ?Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.? You can learn more about the project here, and catch sneak peeks of my projects by following me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (I?m @pancakesfries).

Source: http://pancakesandfrenchfries.com/2012/10/day-9-organize-tall-and-skinny-and-skinny-kitchen-cabinet/

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