A Place for Everything You Actually Use: Rethinking Kitchen Storage
Plan kitchen storage around what you own and how you move: drawers, pull-out pantries, corners and the space under the sink, with the reach heights and clearances that make it work.
Every kitchen has one. The cupboard where the good frying pan lives behind the wok, under the roasting tin, beside a salad spinner nobody has used since 2019. Getting the pan out takes three moves and a small clatter. Putting it back takes four. Most kitchens do not lack storage. They have plenty of it in the wrong shape.
Hardware is what changes the shape: a drawer instead of a shelf, a pull-out instead of a deep dark cupboard, a divider that gives the lids somewhere to go. The trick is to choose it for the things you own and the way you move, not from a brochure. Start with an honest inventory and a few ordinary routines, and the right fittings tend to suggest themselves.
The starting point
Take stock of what you keep, store it near the job it does, and check each fitting’s size, loaded weight and clearances before you order.
In this article
Empty the cupboards first
Pick a cupboard, take everything out and sort it on the table by what it is for. Everyday pans in one pile, the fish kettle and the cake tins in another. Breakfast things here, baking things there. Then be honest. Three colanders is two too many. You are designing storage for the things you mean to keep, so this is the moment to decide what those are.
Measure the awkward ones. A tall bottle of olive oil, a wide baking tray or a food processor with its bowl attached will decide a shelf height far more usefully than a standard drawing. Remember handles, and the extra room needed to lift something out. A space that fits a pan exactly on paper can be a nuisance in real life.
Then think about weight. A drawer of cast-iron pans or a stack of stoneware plates is heavier than it looks, and runners and baskets carry a rated load. A rough figure for each fully loaded drawer, together with your measurements, gives the cabinet maker a proper brief rather than a request for lots of storage, please.
Store things where you use them
Kitchen designers often divide a kitchen into zones: food storage, everyday items such as plates and glasses, preparation, cooking and cleaning. Research by the hinge and drawer maker Blum suggests that the main preparation area, between sink and hob, should be at least 90 cm wide. Store knives and boards beside it, pans and utensils near the hob, and plates close to the dishwasher.
Treat zones as a starting point, not a rule. A home with two cooks, children making their own breakfast or guests helping themselves to drinks will have routes that cross. Sketch a real evening rather than a tidy one-person demonstration, and look for the spots where one person opening a drawer will block another.
Try the unloading test. Stand at the dishwasher with a clean plate and walk it to where plates will live. Do you have to step around an open door or reach over someone at the sink? Do the same with bowls and everyday glasses. If unloading the dishwasher takes two minutes instead of five, everyone in the house is more likely to do it.
One tall pull-out or several drawers
A tall pull-out pantry slides out of the cabinet like a filing drawer, so you can see and reach the shelves from both sides. It turns a narrow gap into useful storage and can be a good answer where a walk-in larder would take too much floor. Check the actual basket sizes, the rated load and how it feels to move when fully stocked with tins.
Internal drawers behind a tall door work differently. You open the door, then pull out only the level you need, rather than moving the whole pantry at once. That can suit heavy groceries or a household that likes separate sections. The cost is an extra movement every time, and space for the doors to swing and the drawers to travel.
Test both ideas against your real shopping. Picture tall bottles, small jars and half-used packets of pasta, and check the usable width and the height between levels. Blum’s own planning research found that one wide pull-out can hold up to 15 per cent more than two narrow ones of the same total width, because there are fewer side panels and runners eating into the space.
Newmatic’s kitchen hardware collection includes tall pull-out pantry options in several cabinet-size categories, as well as drawer baskets. Treat those size categories as a starting point. Your cabinet maker still needs the full installation dimensions, clearances and fixing details for the exact model.
What goes inside a drawer
A deep drawer holds pans well, until the lids slide around and the handles tangle. Ask yourself whether you are happy to lift two pans out to reach the one you use every night. Often a divider or a separate shallow drawer for lids does more good than another deep drawer.
Shallow drawers suit cutlery, utensils and small tools, because you can see everything at a glance. Very deep drawers invite layers, and layers hide things. Size each drawer to what will go in it, instead of giving every drawer stack identical proportions because it looks neat from the front.
Check the runners too. Full-extension runners bring the whole drawer out of the cabinet, while cheaper partial-extension runners leave the back quarter or so out of easy reach, which is exactly where the forgotten things gather. Ask about load ratings, and whether the box, runners and fixings are designed to work together. Soft-close is pleasant, but it is no substitute for runners that can take the weight.
The awkward corner
Where two runs of cabinets meet, there is a deep, dark space that a normal door barely reaches. Corner fittings, from swing-out shelves to carousels, bring that space into reach, but they take up room and add moving parts of their own. Compare what you can actually store once the mechanism is in, not just the size of the empty cabinet.
Sometimes the corner does not need to be clever. If it holds the turkey roasting tin and the big party platter, a plain shelf you visit twice a year may be fine. Save the money for a better drawer next to the hob, where you go twenty times a day.
Whatever you choose, check how it moves alongside its neighbours. A corner unit that glides in the showroom can catch on a projecting handle or an oven door at home. Ask for a drawing that shows fittings in their open positions, and fix any clashes before the doors are made.
Between hip and shoulder
Ergonomists keep coming back to the same simple rule: keep the things you use most between hip and shoulder height, where you can reach them without stooping or stretching. High cupboards are fine for the fondue set. Low ones are fine for the rarely used stockpot. Everyday things belong in the middle band, sized to the people who actually live there.
Newmatic’s current hardware range includes motorised spice-cabinet options, which can bring high storage down to a comfortable height. Before choosing one, ask about its rated load, its power supply, what happens in a power cut and how it is serviced. A motor should solve a real reach problem, not add movement to a cupboard that already works.
Think about jars, too. Matching containers make a shelf easier to scan, but decanting every ingredient becomes one more weekly chore. Choose a system you will actually keep up. Clear labels and a spot for the refill packet often do more than a pantry that only looks perfect on the day it was styled.
Pipes, vents and other immovable objects
The sink cabinet looks like a full cupboard on the drawing, but the bowl, waste pipe, trap and tap hoses take a large bite out of it. A pull-out bin or organiser has to move around all of that. Measure the cabinet with the plumbing in place and choose fittings made for the space that is left, not for the outer width.
Built-in appliances need breathing room. Every ventilation gap and service opening the manufacturer asks for has to stay clear, however tempting the space looks for trays or bottles. Get the appliance installer and the cabinet maker to agree what must stay empty, especially under the hob and around an integrated fridge.
Power belongs in the plan as well. Newmatic lists pop-up and track sockets alongside its kitchen accessories. An electrician should confirm where they can go, how they are supplied and what load they will carry. A neat socket does not make it safe to run every appliance at once, and it does not make a wet area a good place for electricity.
Easy to put away, not just to take out
Most storage gets judged by how easily things come out. Try the opposite. Can you put a pan back with one hand while the other holds the lid? Can you unpack the shopping without first emptying half a shelf? Could a visiting relative find where the colander lives without asking?
Leave some slack. Kitchens slowly fill up with a new lunchbox, an extra bag of rice, a borrowed dish that never went home. A little spare space lets the system absorb ordinary life before it spills onto the worktop.
Be careful with fixed dividers. Packaging changes, and so do the shops you use. Adjustable inserts cope better when contents vary. A beautiful, exact slot for one brand of cereal box stops being useful the week you switch brands or buy the family-size pack.
Write it down before you order
Make a simple list, cabinet by cabinet: what it will hold, which fitting it gets, the usable inside dimensions and how it opens. Add load ratings and any service access. A list like that turns a vague wish for more storage into something your cabinet maker can check and price properly.
See the main mechanisms working before you commit. Open them slowly, close them the way you would on a busy evening, and imagine doing it ten times a day. Check whether baskets lift out easily for cleaning. The most impressive fitting in the showroom is not always the one you will enjoy using.
At handover, load the drawers and pull-outs with what they will really hold, within their rated limits. Check the doors line up, handles clear each other and runners move smoothly. Ask how to adjust them. Kitchens usually last fifteen years or more, so keep the model numbers with the drawings for the day a runner needs replacing.
Should every base cabinet be a drawer?
Not always. Drawers make most base cabinets easier to use, but the sink cabinet, appliance clearances and some bulky items may call for something else. Decide cabinet by cabinet and give each space one clear job.
Where should I start if I can only change one thing?
Start with the cupboard that annoys you most often. Measure what lives there and how you reach it, then look at the storage hardware in the Newmatic range or visit a showroom to try the mechanisms. One well-chosen pull-out or drawer can make every day a little easier.
