Any idea how to organize inside these deep kitchen lower cabinets?
The kitchen cabinets in this house are attractive but the insides are bare bones. I am NOT planning to replace the cabinets. If I ever have the chance to design a new kitchen, I would have almost ALL drawers for the lower cabinets. But, that's not where I am at for now.
We installed pull-out wire mesh drawers from Elfa on the floor of the cabinet some years ago. Despite the favorable press the Elfa system seems to get, I don’t think much of them. The runners on the drawers run between a simple metal U shaped track. No ball bearings. You can’t put much weight on them before they start to bind. Thus I seldom pull them out more than a few inches. Instead, I have to kneel on the floor and pull stuff out to reach what’s in the back. I’m tired of that! And, having had knee surgery 9 months ago, I don’t want to do it.
On the top shelf are pull-out Rubbermaid shallow drawers. Also a joke. I know they are too narrow, as shows in the photos: that's all we could find at the time.
What I didn’t consider at the time we added these is the fact that the single shelf does not run the full depth front to back. It’s like a 2/3rds deep shelf. We could add another strip of wood to the front assuming we could find a board of the right thickness. The original shelf is fastened in there so firmly it is not easy to get it out. We did pull it out in one of the smaller cabinets. I’d say I’m willing to pull it out, but I know my husband would balk big time. He is of the “make-do”school.
View of drawers shown at the left is before sorting through and discarding maybe 1 sq foot of stuff. Drawers at right are after going through them all. I had not replaced stuff in top drawer yet; I wanted you to see what it looks like empty.
I just went through them and shifted out anything that was heavy, figuring I could correct the problem that way. Trouble was, there was nothing really heavy in any of them. Just miscellaneous light weight baking tools and supplies. Half a bag of powdered sugar? Ditto brown sugar? Muffin tins? Is that really too much, Elfa?
At the time we installed these, the aftermarket options were very few. But I am thinking these must be something better out there now.
Thanks for your suggestions.
Comments (12)
PROMDLN
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoI've seen these in big box stores, they seem moderately sturdy.
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AnnKH
7 years agoI built several pullouts for my Mom's kitchen, and she liked them so much I made made some for a couple of her friends, and a few in my own house. I used Blum Metaboxes, which are pretty easy to build and install if you have moderate carpenter skills. Mom's cabinets had only a 1/2 shelf on top, so she got a lot of extra storage with two drawers!
arlandria
7 years ago
raee_gw zone 5b-6a Ohio
7 years agolinnea56 (zone 5b Chicago)
7 years ago
lazy_gardens
7 years agolazy_gardens
7 years agoExample: All I could do with this short cabinet in the Phoenix house was put in one pullout (Lowes? Home Depot?) on the top shelf - couldn't remove the shelf without wrecking the cheap cabinet.
And I couldn't get enough room in the bottom to install anything.
I don't have a "before" of it - it was full of stacked bakeware.
The bottom holds the glass baking dishes, stacked on the left side. Pulling out the whole stack is not hard, Glass loaf pans on the right, with pie pans in the back.
But that small insert up top corraled the most-used things, the microwave casserole dishes, with the small stuff in the back.
Technically, I "lost space" along the edges, but the ability to pull it out and select the casserole dish I needed without going into the cabinet like a gopher diving for cover was marvelous. The accessible space went from a strip along the front of the cabinet to the whole drawer.
talley_sue_nyc
7 years agolast modified: 7 years ago
MDLN