Kitchen Storage the Alton Brown Way

[Titus0327]

Im building a new house and its almost finished. I now wish I would of been a little more proactive in the beginning, but what can ya do. Im a big fan of Altons show Good Eats, as Im sure alot of us are. Often throughout Good Eats he mentions little tid bits, or nuggets of wisdom regarding storage space in the kithcen (ie. his spices are in those magnetic or velcro tins). However, sometimes he doesnt even mention the idea but you notice it as the cameras glance by. Obviously, I would like to save as much space in this new kictchen as possible and implement as many of his ideas as possible. So, Im asking for any help regarding kitchen storage. A couple other ideas that Im going to use is the hanging pot rack, and I'll probably install a horizontal plate rack in my cupboard to help store tuppperware lids. I would appreciate any other space saving suggestions/techniques that you use, please feel free to add a link if you have something specific in mind.

Thanks
Chris

[grnidkjun]

One of the solutions from a Good Eats episode was to get some heavy magnets from the hardware store.. mount one to the back of the cabinet door..
then put a pie tin or such on it.. and have another magnet to place on the floor of the tin over the mounted magnet to sandwich it to the door up and out of the way.
Of course this would only work if you have room between the door and any shelves.

I have magnetic spice tins that I use.. love them.

[sueatmo]

I have a cooktop with drawers underneath. This is my favorite way to store pans. I like to store tools close to where they will be used. Also, have the dish cabinets close to the dishwasher. You don't want to have to carry the clean dishes far to put them away. The best thing I did in my kitchen when we redid it was to incorporate 2 appliance garages into the plan. You can store stuff you don't want to look at all the time, but need, in the garages. Mine close with tambour doors. I also recommend shelves for cookbooks, a knife drawer and if there is room, a spice drawer. Have fun planning your new kitchen.

[I used to know how to cook...]

Hi Titus,

Vertical dividers for sheet pans, trays and such. A good place for this is a high-ish cabinet, perhaps above the stove or fridge. The tins are easy to pull out and you only need to see the edge to spot the one you want.

My suggestion would be perhaps 5-6" between dividers.

Lucy

[TDEL]

I had my husband build me drawers instead of just shelves so that when I need something that is in the back I just pull out the drawer and there is no trying to reach in the back. We still have the doors to the cabinets, but when we open them we have drawers

[JEN10]

Drawers are great, I use almost all drawers for base cabinets. Why open a drawer and then a roll out shelf? It costs more that way too. Use undermount guides for your drawers it save precious inches over the sidemounts. The tray dividers are a great space saver as stated above. In the pantry cabinets roll out shelves are great for access on the lower section, I also like to use can storage on the door if you are using adjustable shelves as well. In corners, a lazy susan can hold a ton of items, I have had clients that use them as pantry storage. Inches count, so custom cabinets can often increase your storage quiet a bit over stock cabinets. If you can, investigate hiring a design professional that specializes in kitchens. That does not mean the cabinet maker, he is usually not a design professional.