Kitchen design hacks that just make sense

I remember when integrated trash bins became a thing. And when microwaves became regularly built in, rather than being a countertop appliance. I remember when they started building the refrigerator into the wall of cabinetry, instead of making it an outlier in the room. How many of us lived in that apartment with the refrigerator completely orphaned on the other side of the room? Or had that tiny galley kitchen with no counter space and had to put the microwave on the counter?

They were small changes, but these novel innovations changed the way we utilized space in our kitchens, continually refining how we maximized for counter space or added more storage or ensured that doors could always open. The innovations inspiring me today further consider accessibility and ergonomics, family efficiencies, economics, and aesthetics.

Accessibility Hack: drawers, not doors

Base cabinetry is arguably the hardest working cabinetry in your kitchen. We store pots, pans, baking sheets, cutting boards, towels, silverware, cooking utensils, and more in these cabinets. Common configurations include a 2 door base with a long drawer above, and an adjustable shelf. If you have partial overlay doors, or doors that don’t meet in the middle, you may also have a center stile on the face frame of the cabinet.

The lower cabinet doors get kicked, nicked, and and spilled on. They are also ergonomically unsatisfying and sometimes inaccessible. If you’ve ever had to get on your hands and knees to get the waffle iron out of the back of a corner cabinet, you’ll understand what I mean. If you have a center stile, it can be in the way of getting what you need out of the cabinet. Adjustable shelves allow you to customize the height of the shelf, but getting the shelf in and out of the cabinet is no simple feat.

Prioritizing base cabinets with deep, soft close drawers is a kitchen design hack that just makes sense. Drawers may sacrifice a little bit of storage space, but make up for the lost space with efficient and accessible utilization of that space. No more getting on the floor to reach a pan lost to the back of the cabinet. All your kitchen tools will be visually and physically reachable. Deep drawers allow you to stack pots and pans, and organizational inserts let you neatly store lids and other items that won’t easily stack. Most cabinet makers will offer a three drawer base with a 6 in deep top drawer, and equal depth 2nd and 3rd drawer, as well as a two drawer base with equal depth top and bottom drawers. There are countless inserts and configuration to ensure your drawers are incredibly useful.

Budget & beauty hack: open shelving + counter towers + accessories

When open shelving became THE prevailing kitchen design trend a few years ago, families shied away from the trend. Sippy cups and kids plates didn’t make sense to display, and their kitchen full of two-door base cabinets wasn’t set up to let them stack plates in a lower cabinet. It either required a consistent organizational prowess and design to achieve the right look, or you needed another place to store some of your things that didn’t necessarily fit the aesthetic. Because of this, open shelving was a trend that was confined to the pages of design magazines, or maybe a single upper cabinet was removed and replaced with open shelves.

But here’s the thing about open shelving. It’s economically efficient. If you are trying to renovate your kitchen and you have a tight budget, open upper shelving is a GREAT way to save a few dollars, especially if you make a few intentional design choices that maximize the usefulness of the shelving. It’s also a great choice for a smaller kitchen. Open upper shelving will make a low ceiling feel taller and a tight space feel more arid.

So how do we make open shelving make sense in the kitchen? By adding counter towers and accessories to the mix. My love affair with counter towers will continue into 2025. These hardworking cabinets give you storage behind doors for your counter appliances, and a place to hideaway your less aesthetically pleasing kitchenware, like those mismatched beer glasses from your first apartment you don’t have the heart to get rid of and still get used daily. They can bring symmetry and balance to the space, and if carefully planned, can put things like coffee mugs in reach of your coffee maker.

Accessories like plate racks, stemware racks, and pot rails make the open shelving more flexible- not everything needs to stack in order to be stored. Plate racks are nostalgic, but they don’t have to be vintage or antique. Storing your plates in this way also prevents scratching and chipping of your plates from stacking. Hang your stemware on the underside of a shelf for visual interest, safe storage, and prevent dust from collecting on the inside (as if they would be sitting empty long enough for that to happen). Installing a pot rail with hooks gives you space to hang high-use items like measuring cups, oven mitts, or your most used skillet.

Efficiency hack: dueling dishwashers

The chore that gets the most groans in my house, no matter what, is dishes. I don’t know a single family that enjoys doing dishes. Since COVID, our dishwasher gets more use than ever before, and I almost always feel like I could use a second dishwasher. Once, I visited a friend who was renting a house in Maryland for the summer, and the house had TWO dishwashers in the kitchen. It was a revelation. The second dishwasher was smaller, but it seemed to make everything so much easier. At the time, my friend had two young kids, one still using bottles. She would use the smaller dishwasher to wash the daily bottle backlog and kid plates and utensils, and use the larger one as it filled up with the kitchenware her and her husband would use.

Dual dishwashers for active families is kitchen design hack that just makes sense. If your home is large enough for a back kitchen or scullery, dual dishwashers are practically a given, but I think this can work even in a regular kitchen. If you split the water line at the sink to allow for a dishwasher on both sides, and scoot the pullout trash down just to the outside of your smaller dishwasher, you will be hacking your way to an easier daily dishes routine.

Storage hack: making use of dead spaces

One of my favorite things to do in kitchen design is add unexpected storage to otherwise dead space in a kitchen. For example, the end of a run of cabinets that opens into another space is an opportunity to add a little extra storage. It could be the bookshelf for your cookbooks or a kitchen drop station or a dog food and water station or a mini broom closet. How about adding a built-in banquette with hinged tops in your eat-in space?

It could be the shelf that goes across the kitchen window for your fresh herb garden. It’s the shelf that sits just below your range hood to hold your most used and loved spices and cooking oils. It’s adding pull down storage under your upper cabinets to store items like your kitchen knives.

Dead spaces aren’t meant for solving major storage problems- but they can add delight and that extra thing that makes your kitchen feel cozy and extra useful.

See a hack here you think you might want to consider for your kitchen? Let’s talk and see if Vibe can help you elevate, renovate, or innovate your way to your ultimate home vibes.