I moved into this small kitchen in 2019. At the time, I knew the kitchen would be very small for storage but didn’t know the layout for my remodeled kitchen. I remodeled about five months after moving in.
The kitchen was original 1950. The detailing was adorable, but the lower cabinets were inglorious, to say the least. Past water damage had caused the wall to crumble. It had no dishwasher and one cabinet was so close to the stove that it didn’t function well.
Small Kitchen Challenges
I’m very proud of the remodel, but I’ll save that for another post. After the remodel, I only had one drawer. I had 4 drawers in the previous kitchen. Thankfully, this was similar in size to those I’d had before so I carried over the items from my previous cutlery drawer.
While the starting state of this drawer was basically what I started with, I wanted to get everything off my counters and there’s one major obstacle to doing so. The knife block! Have you ever noticed how deep a knife block with knives is? I tried being unconventional and putting in an upper cabinet. Nope. Too deep.
My cabinets sit too low to fit a knife on a magnetic strip, at least not vertically. I’m not a fan of them being out in the open anyway. After many nights of searching on Amazon, Pinterest, and Google, I finally found a viable option. I found a small drawer insert that could hold my essential knives.
Try Out an Idea Before Purchasing
I mocked up a temporary holder to try it out. The item sold only through Williams-Sonoma for over $30 and that’s a lot and an hour away to the nearest store. With the temporary holder, I could determine if just those knives would be enough and if I could live with the layout.
I moved the pop tabs down to the deep drawer and the plastic spoons to my lunchbox storage area (cabinet above the fridge). Then I moved the Ziplock bags down to the pull-out blind corner cabinet basket.
I returned my mother’s apple corer/cutter. It seems that she’d been looking for it off and on wondering what happened to it. Oops. I don’t cut apples. I also discovered that I had two orange peelers but I’ve been reacting to oranges for years.
Everything felt a little crowded at the top so I tried a different arrangement.
Final Purchase in Place
Eventually, I purchased the actual knife block and tried everything as it was but it didn’t fit comfortably, so I moved it all around to this arrangement.
For better food management, I added masking tape and a Sharpie to my misc. bin. You can see how I use the masking tape in my first Meal Planning-Day 2, Day 3, or Day 4 posts.
This arrangement is working well. It is easy to get out the more regular use items and there is room on the knife block to get steak knives if I want. I don’t currently own any. The items from the knife block that I use less but sometimes were moved to the kitchen deep drawer, which you can see how I organized the kitchen deep drawer here.
I may modify the knife block in the future. My knife set has a think back end of the blade so it sits up and rocks slightly in this knife block. At this point, it’s unfortunate but not bothersome.