One Very Handy Kitchen Shelf

You know how when you move into a new place, and you look around at all of the empty rooms and closets and cabinets and think, "what am I even going to do with all this storage space!?!" And then you get all your pots and pans/ furniture/clothes/what-have-you in there and all suddenly all this space all but disappears.

Well, it's happened to me. Multiple times. Perhaps I need to become a better judge of space, but what's done is done. And that being said, I really do like our kitchen; the problem is a lack of a pantry. My parent's house growing up and even my old apartment both had pantries so I've become used to the huge amount of extra storage space they provide. Without one, our food has begun to take over the space for our pots, pans, dishes, glasses, and gadgets. We decided to do something about the pots and pans, because they were the biggest headache to store and would give us the most room by moving somewhere else.

I decided my ideal solution would be to put a stainless steel grated shelf on the empty wall above the "coffee corner" and hang the pots and pans from S hooks all sexy commercial kitchen style.

So we took a trip to Lowe's and looked at kitchen shelving- it was pricey and smaller than I preferred. So then we looked at garage shelving, and found some that was the perfect size and only $50 for 2 shelves. That was about a quarter of the average price of the kitchen shelving! And eventually we'll put the other one in the garage, so it won't be a waste to have two. I debated it for a while, wondering if it looked too industrial. But I decided the most industrial-looking part of it was the slightly textured black/silver finish, and that could easily be taken care of with a couple coats of spray paint come spring.

(we obviously need to shorten the light fixture that is just resting on top of it now)

Another problem our kitchen had was my height. That's right- all 5'2 of me. Each kitchen cabinet had 3 shelves, which would have been great- had I been able to reach them all. The top one was just out of my reach, and I've strained my neck and shoulders countless times trying to reach something up there. Enough is enough. So I had H take out the top divider and move the bottom one slightly up to create 2 larger shelves instead of 3 smaller ones. Now I'm able to stack boxes and cans and tall bottles on the top shelf and still reach them by grabbing the bottom one.

(this one is the corner cabinet, so much room now!)

Nice! We've tackled two top cabinets so far. I'm not sure if we'll do the other two, since they do provide some extra storage for things we don't use as often.