Small kitchens make everything more challenging, especially storage of extra dishes and cutlery. Whether you have a big family or like to host, it's common to wind up with more silverware than you have room to stow in a single drawer. Especially if you don't have that much drawer space to start with. What can you do with extra cutlery in a small kitchen to avoid jumbled sharp edges and make sure your flatware is available when you're ready to set a big table?
Rest assured, there are a lot of ideas available when it comes to creative ways to store cutlery, and the "proper" way is in the eye of the beholder. Check out these options and decide which is the perfect cutlery solution for your small kitchen.
Starting with the basics, if you have a silverware drawer but it's all jumbled together, get a drawer organizer. If normal organizers are too small, get individual vertical trays and line up the ones that fit - or get a sliding drawer organizer set to the smallest setting. Then sort your flatware into forks, butter knives, steak knives, and spoons.
Tip: Lay small forks and small spoons with their like, but facing down instead of up for easy, tidy, and useful storage.
Does your small kitchen have pointlessly deep yet narrow drawers? This was a trend for a while and is more prominent in some regions. For deep drawers, try layered organizers so that lifting one silverware organizer reveals another organizer full of even more cutlery underneath. This is a great way to stow your less-used, fancy, or miscellaneous flatware while keeping your main set of most-used cutlery in the top tray.
What should you do with your chef knives or regularly used steak knives? One of the safest, most elegant, and space-efficient tricks is a magnetic knife rack. Screw or stick it to your backsplash and then slap the flat blades of your knives to the magnets with the handles pointed up. This makes your knives very easy and safe to grab, and always out of the way.
Tip: Make sure the tips of the knives are at least a half-inch above the countertop for easier and safer cleaning.
You can also use something like a desk organizer -a row of squared-off cups - mounted to your backsplash as a hanging silverware organizer. This is a great trick for all sorts of utensils in a small kitchen where your backsplash wall space can become valuable storage for your spatulas, spoons tongs, and normal everyday flatware alike.
Cabinet door pockets are another clever possibility. In a small kitchen that utterly lacks a silverware-appropriate drawer, you can make a space for your cutlery using hanging pouches on the inside of a cabinet door. Simply find a style that fits neatly when the cabinet closes and you can multiply your storage by using the inside of every cabinet door.
Do you have a mug tree decorating your small kitchen's countertop? If you don't use those mugs all the time, make them useful by propping your everyday cutlery in them. This is a fun two-for-one solution that keeps both handy mugs and handy spoons, forks, and knives at hand when you need them. Plus, it's fun to look at.
Just because you have a small kitchen doesn't mean that you are stuck with sub-par storage. Edesia Kitchen & Bath Studio's builder designers can help you find all sorts of ways to build better-integrated storage into surprising and useful locations throughout the layout of your small kitchen.
We would love to dive into the storage solutions available for your space. Contact us today to get started with a consultation.