How to Organize Corner Cabinets

Organizing corner cabinets can be REALLY hard.  They are often awkward but do have good storage space.  In this post, I share some of the ways I organized mine an how a simple $15 changed how much easier it was to use!

Ok, let’s step back into 2013 when I had a corner cabinet that was JUST a mess it.

You know you all want to see it.

Admit it.

Hilary (The Organized Mom), with a cluttered cabinet?  The outrage. {please note sarcasm font}

SO, yesterday I decided to tackle this wonky cabinet we have by our oven (wonky being a very technical term).  Here’s a “zoomed-out” picture to show you it’s in a “wonky” spot. I know you know what I mean. You really can only mostly see the cabinet door.

Ok, so here’s our kitchen.  TO the left is our fridge, and to the right is the entry into the dining area (which we use as my blogging shrine…).  The cabinet in question is the one there on the right at the bottom.  Its door is open, it’s a tiny door and a big cabinet that extends back to the wall to the right of the stove. It leaves you reaching WAY back there.

Anyone else have a cabinet like this?

Also, it’s just half a shelf on the top.  I decided to keep my pans in here (keeping things by where you use them, aka, the stove).  I also have some extra #10 cans of wheat back there.  Is by your stove the best place to store wheat?

Maybe not, but honestly is Arizona the best place to store food?  Maybe not.

Gotta do what you can, right? 🙂

So, my problem was pans.  I was piling all my frying pans of random sizes all together.  You know, stacking them.   This was problematic in a few ways:

1.  It could scratch the non-stick coating, which is not good.

2.  It was a PAIN in the pa-tootie when I wanted to get out any frying pan (and the largest is not the one I reach for most frequently).  I also had lids rolling all around in that place.

My kids empty the dishwasher and sometimes just toss stuff in there. Because there wasn’t particularly a “system” it made it hard to be upset about things like that.

So, I took some organizing stuff I’d gleaned from the internets and came up with this:

First off, let me say that if I’d had this cabinet in California it would have be PACKED TOP to BOTTOM with stuff.  I would have been so grateful for this cabinet I would have worshipped it in a sad and pathetic way. It was a small kitchen — this much space would’ve been overcrowded for sure.

BUT this is Arizona and my kitchen is a lot bigger, and the sad truth is that in order to really organize this cabinet I couldn’t pack it top to bottom (and I have more convenient ways to store less-used items now, like on the top of my cabinets.  I’m classy). This kitchen just has a lot of space compared to our previous house.

BTW, we know kitchens require some cleaning — so grab my cleaning schedule here:

Here’s a few other kitchen posts you might find helpful:

• Zoning Your Kitchen
• Decluttering Your Kitchen
• Kitchen Sink Organization: The big tips making dishes easier!
• How to Clean Your Kitchen: Cleaning in Circles
• Organize Your Kitchen: Genius ideas for your most-used room

There’s definitely more room to put stuff in here, but it’s so awkward it’s difficult.  I certainly could add a few more food storage cans.

Oh, and don’t judge my cabinet paper or lack thereof on the bottom shelf.  I already spent 20 minutes explaining cabinet paper to my oldest.  It wasn’t pretty {btw, he was my partner in crime on this one.  I really like passing on my OCD showing my kids how to organize effectively}.

So, back to the lower cabinet.  In it, we have:

1. 5 #10 cans (don’t have to be here, but it’s a good place to store cans, I may add a few more in the coming weeks)
2. 5 frying pans
3. 2 smaller pots, one larger pot.
4. Lids (one of our lids fell victim to our tile floor, so I got a giant multi-purpose lid that is extra annoying, but also super handy)
5. An extra set of stainless steel bowls that I rarely use, but I can’t part with for some sad reason.
6. A cast iron pot (my mom gave me this, it was theirs when I was growing up, I love it!)
7. A smaller grill pan.
8. A splatter screen (one of my favorite things to help keep my stove clean when I’m making a tomato-y sauce)

The good news is that this is most all pots and pans — no small appliances or things REALLY weird to hold. I knew would could make this a great storage space, and be accessible (if we didn’t over-pack it).

The bad news is that pans are all round shape items that don’t often stack well and are bulky to organize in a corner space.

The corner of a kitchen can still be a REALLY important place to be — and this is for us. We do a lot of food prep here by our stove and the other kitchen cupboards hold spices, bowls and kitchen tools nicely!

Again, there is PLENTY of room for all this stuff but with the whole small door and the wonky space behind the stove I grumbled each and EVERY time I got something out of it. I think they call this a blind corner cabinet (probably because you can’t see anything in it)

What I did (I talk a lot about this process in my free challenge here).

1.  The first step (and a good idea) — I removed everything from the cabinet.

2.  Cleaned out the whole cabinet with an antibacterial wipe (actually, I had a child do this).  If you’re cleaning out, you might as well CLEAN out. This can be the best part because things look so great when you find your simple solution!

3.  Shoved the wheat to the back of the cabinet — in the bottom corner.  I think nothing is actually in the MOST difficult corner to get to (the one right next to the stove).  I then was able to shove the bowls on top of the wheat before the 2nd shelf.  You can kind of see that here. It’s not something we need easy access to.

Pro Tip: Put large items in the back. If I put a bunch of small items back there I don’t think I could literally get them out — it’s SO hard to reach (I could send a kid in though).

3.  I then looked at our stuff and thought about how often we use any of it.  The red pan probably gets used least (but still probably every other week).  SO I put it next. BTW, this whole system is from my 5-word Organization Challenge — it’s totally free, and it’s going to change how you see organizing:

My mind wandered.  I just hated all those lids and I knew the budget for my little cabinet remodel was tiny.  I was going to use my dish drainer as a lid organizer, but then I saw to replace it would be like 20 bucks (I have a small one in my sink that is crazy handy, but expensive).

Solving the problem of rolling lids:

So, I went to Walmart (you could easily find this at a place like the Container Store too) on my way home and found something like this (I love that this one is adjustable).  My problem is that I needed it to be small enough to fit between the wall of the cabinet and before that 2nd shelf, so mine only has room for like 4 lids.  I wish it held more, but life goes on, right?

I brought it home and {angels singing} it worked!  No more rolling lids and I had a system that my kids could understand and follow (as well as any kid follows any system).

Solving the problem of stacked pans:

At this point, I had the pots on the bottom and all of my pans stacked on the shelf above and I still hated having to pull all those pans out to get my tiny little frying pan to do an egg in the morning.  So I dabbled in our friend the internet and found this little diddy.

It’s made by Rubbermaid, you can get it on Amazon.  It’s REALLY Sturdy and the “racks” are really well coated so the constant pulling and pushing in of pans aren’t going to wear it down to the metal, or at least I think so.

The sad news, is that the top shelf is just under 12 inches so it just slides into the bottom part of the cabinet (good news is that it’s wedged in there, so I’m not worried about it tipping), and nothing can fit on top, but I am LOVING how easy it is to pull pans out.

The other sad news, is that the bottom rack isn’t large enough for our largest frying pan.  So I had to figure out a home for it elsewhere, but that gave us an extra spot for the griddle pan.  Horray!

Also, there’s room enough on that shelf that if I got one more smaller frying pan it could fit on top of that if need be, but that brings me back to the whole scratching your nonstick coating business.  Blech…

So I came up with the option of putting the larger frying an on top of the red one.  It literally fits nowhere in any other cabinet, I tried.  That sucker is BIG (but great for large stove-top meals, I really like it — I got it Costco).

Then, the small pots can stack next to it (with lids, that frees up some room in my lid organizer — think the kids will remember to keep them together) and my most-used pot next to them (its lid is the one that shattered, so I wish it had a lid to go with it, but it doesn’t).  If anyone has a brighter idea for this large pan, please share.  I’m mulling over putting it under the stove, but that brings me back to the whole “no stacking” thing, and this way is probably more convenient, but time will tell.

Ta-da! 

It’s my useable cabinet.  I’m hoping it stays as useable.  I’m on the lookout for other stuff that could go at the back. 

There are a lot of really great pull-out lid and pan organizers out there.  I lusted after those, but I knew in buying one of those I was relegating the rest of the cabinet to things I would NEVER use, and that’s just not how I roll.  I think this is doable.

We actually sprung for some pull-out drawers in the rest of the kitchen, but it just doesn’t work here. These blind cabinets in kitchen corners are tricky!

In our other kitchen corner cabinet we utilize a Lazy Susan. But it just doesn’t work in this (because of the oven). The Lazy Susan’s rotating design sure makes it simple to get to all the things and food items. We keep oils and sauces on top and food storage containers on the bottom.

We do actually have an upper corner cabinet that is similarly as bad — it’s just not as deep, or painful. But it is still an awkward corner cabinet space. Once again, I prioritize things we REALLY use at the opening, and push things we RARELY use in the corner. I also try to make it as easy as possible to move the things at the front opening (container those things so I can take them out), so the back corner things are at least somewhat accessible. Some day I hope to have minimized our needs enough to leave that back lonely corner as dead space.

In some ways think upper corner kitchen cabinets are even worse (than bottom corner cabinets) because you have to be taller to get all the way back there.

Best Thing Tip: Put small items into a container (I love Ikea various containers) in easy reach — that way it’s easier to pull them all out to access any specific items in the back.

The best way to organize is to always put the things you reach for the most as the most accessible. A great way to do this is to separate out the most important things.

Here’s the best news: Total Budget about 15 dollars with tax.

So, do you have a wonky cabinet?  How do you organize it?  Inquiring minds…. I hope this helps you organize your own corner cupboard.

If you’re thinking — HILARY, it’s not just one cabinet at my house — it’s the whole house!

I was the same way. Things like this just made me want to burn my house down rather than find a fix. BUT I found something that really helped.

I needed a process that…

• Got MIND on track to what you want your organizing to look like.
• Gave me IDEAS to help you organize spaces of your own
• MOTIVATED me to keep going and make a change.

It’s called The Organized Home. It was created to help families organize and not feel so alone while they’re doing it.

Organizing is hard, it can feel REALLY tiring, so a little help can help a lot!