Dish me the Dishes!

A few years back I designed high end kitchens in the NY metro area. The process honestly, was exhausting! (I give all the kitchen designers who have stuck with it out there major props!) Seven out of every ten clients I worked with were dead set on getting as much storage as humanly possible. Upper cabinets to the ceiling, clever storage for deep corner base cabinets, pantry walls, roll out shelves, double roll out shelves, shallow drawers, deep drawers... yadda yadda yadda. On the other side of the fence of all those clients who wanted storage, storage, storage there were considerations for the size of a room and how much money the entire kitchen was going to cost. Cabinetry is expensive any way you look at it... whether it's "boxed" off a shelf, "semi custom" from a dealer or "custom" from a mill worker it's going to take a chunk of change. (Unless you can repurpose, repaint, etc which I encourage!) Here's a tip, the fewer quantity of doors you put on a kitchen means fewer dollars spent. In addition, sometimes you only have so much space! So, how do you get all the storage you want without closing in a small (or large for that matter) space?


I always suggest the idea of open shelving. Not all open shelving, but some... and mostly upper cabinets. People would say to me, "But then I would have to buy all new dishware and I don't want to do that... plus, whoever has this house next may not like that." It's your house... not some future buyer 15 or 20 years from now. (Is there such thing as "shaking adult syndrome?" I swear if I acted on my frustrations I could have injured someone... but I didn't!!!) And talk about saving money, a new set of dishes cost a fraction of a new kitchen and they will also last you a lifetime. In my opinion, if you are making an investment in your kitchen you should really discuss the purpose of your kitchen and how to accommodate for all your kitchen necessities.


When working on your own kitchen, carefully consider what kind of storage you need. I literally used to measure linear feet of shelving, drawers etc before we started to design a new kitchen. While planning for all that needed space I always encouraged my clients to really evaluate what they have in their existing cabinets. Many of us acquire things over the years and because our cabinet doors are closed 99% of the time we don't realize how much junk we have accumulated. Guess what? It's possible to downsize.

Consider the following ideas: