When I’m helping clients design a new kitchen, I show them some cool ways I’ve found to manage the storage of some odd shaped items. The baking sheets, pizza pans, roasting pans, cutting boards, and muffin tins can be extremely difficult to extract if they are all stacked on top of each other. Inevitably, the one you want is on the bottom. Thankfully, these items and others can be organized neatly in small spaces with dividers installed in various cabinets. Tray dividers are vertical partitions or metal racks that enable the cook to find an item and easily slide it out for immediate use. These work well in spots that might otherwise be tough to reach. I like to see them above the refrigerator in the deep wall cabinet I place above. Even a shorter cook can usually reach the bottom corner of a pizza pan or cookie sheet. They are standing up like books on a shelf. Easy peasy!
Other types of dividers can be arranged in drawers to corral all those odd-shaped items we seem to collect. I know I don’t use my pastry blender very often,(apple pie maybe twice a year) but when I want it, I have a space designed exactly to fit it. The apple corer fits right under it. The Container Store (I love this place) sells a system to arrange items in drawers which was designed by a woman in California. She realized that with rigid plexi type plastic, the only tool necessary to cut a straigt line was a razor blade. All you have to do is score it along a straight edge and snap the pieces over the edge of your counter or table. In the kit are also some peel and stick u-shaped channels that allow you to keep the rigid dividers in place in the drawer and to each other. I took all those wicked kitchen tools out and arranged them on my counter first. I like having the most often used ones closest, and the weirder ones at the back of the drawer. Now I have a perfect place for even the shish-kebob skewers. That’s power! I got so excited I went back and bought more. I now have a special drawer for the plastic picnic flatware, the special spoons for pho noodle soup and even birthday candles.
Crystal, one of my favorite cabinet factories, makes some really yummy wood dividers for your every day silver and even the sharpest of knives. The flatware drawer divider is beautifully made and even lifts out of the drawer easily for quick cleaning. Crystal is happy to make them up in any configuration for custom-fitting of any items you can fit in a drawer.
Something else I’m starting to see more is a removable wood divider in a deep drawer to store the pot lids. We have also had a system for years that consists of a sheet of pegboard with moveable wooden dowels that can be scooted around to hold all your dishes and bowls in place. In a kitchen where there are few or no wall cabinets, dish storage is now not a problem. I also like to use this unit when there are small children. They can be taught to help empty the dishwasher of their plastic dishes, put them away in their drawer, and set their places at the table later. This is a great lesson in self-sufficiency and fosters independence later as they grow.
Getting the meal on the table and cleaning up after are now a bit easier since finding and fitting all the various items is done with such little effort.
-Julie Hendrickson
