Kitchen Storage Solutions – Cupboard Organizer – Raised Shelves

I don’t know about you lot, but we always seem to run out of space in our kitchen. Everything seems to be nicely in order and then we buy something new and bah no space to store it 😦

Our kitchen furniture is the standard ones; the ones off the “shelf” and not made to measure or to any special order, which means that we didn’t choose the size of our cupboards. They are not so deep but they are tall. In an ideal world I would prefer them to be totally different – or at least not as tall as they are at this moment or maybe just having more shelves inside them, but we do not live in an ideal world so we have to deal with what we have.

But where there is a problem there is also usually a solution to it… we resolved our “problem” of wasting storage space with a range of raised shelves. They simply go inside your cupboard and double your space.

I find this solution brilliant. It is so much easier to reach for things when they aren’t stacking directly one on top of each other. So they offer more storage and ease of use and I love them!

We only use the straight inserts – the ones with just one extra surface but if you look around you will be able to find special stacking shelf racks which look like a step ladder (they might be especially useful for small cupboards filled with things like jars of preserves or spices). There is also a range specially designed for corner cupboards.

But this is not the end of the uses for this lovely little insert. We also use them outside of the cupboards. Mark likes to have his essential cooking things always handy, so they were taking valuable worktop space, but no more… we bought a range of narrow inserts and placed them along the side of the wall. This space wasn’t really used anyway as it is below the upper cupboards so access to this space isn’t all that great. This way we have doubled the storage space we would have without them and I think they look nicer too. On baking days he also tends to dismantle one to use it as a tent frame with a T-towel to cover breads and doughnuts as they are rising!

We even have one for our toaster, so we can hide a sandwich maker below 🙂

There are an infinite number of useful applications when you start to think about it.

Do you use raised shelves in your kitchen?

Do you have any space saving tips you would like to share?

Shed me happy, please

We all have hobbies and things we love to do, we Mark loves to cook, especially using our BBQ or a smoker (I crossed out the “we” as I am more of an eating than the cooking type).

Most people use their BBQ in summer when the weather is nice and they have a bunch of friends over, we use it all year round. Mark would love to take his BBQ skills to the next level and he has already catered for 50 guests. All this is good but being a huge BBQ buff means a lot of accessories, tools and extras which you wouldn’t even imagine. Our kitchen is drowning in wood flakes needed to achieve smoke, different racks, 100s of spices necessary for mixing to create the perfect rub depending on the cut and type of meat or fish we are cooking and tons of other things which apparently are essential must haves, I don’t complain though as usually what comes out at the end of the process is mouth-wateringly awesome. All this stuff though which is used solely whilst BBQ-ing all take up valuable space.

Two different types of BBQ require a double amount of accessories, apparently. Very often a rack which can be used on our open top BBQ is not suitable for the closed up smoker, so we need two of them… and the story continues…

Accessories, tools and all those additional things needed for a good BBQ is one thing, the other problem is a prep area. Our kitchen is not huge and at times we really struggle to find enough space to do all that needs to be done.

So I plea to Best Sheds: please shed me happy to save my sanity and my kitchen from being overrun by BBQ accessories and help us create an outdoor prep and storage area.

The 5×4 Pent Shed would be perfect for us. It is not too big, so it will easily fit in our back garden and it is not too small, so there will be enough room for a small prep area and a lot of storage.

And you know what? If we win we might even prepare a nice BBQ for your arrival, so you can have a nice nosh up whilst delivering the shed 🙂