If you have a tiny apartment kitchen like ours, you know that every available surface, nook, and cranny is put to use in some form. Lately we've been eying the top of our fridge and thinking that we could put that space to better use. What do you keep up there?
Right now, the top of the fridge is home to a random collection of rarely-used pans, our slow-cooker, and several half-finished boxes of cereal. There's no real rhyme or reason for why we keep these things there. Well, except for the slow cooker, which doesn't really fit anywhere else! Most of the stuff just ended up there out of default because we didn't have a strong reason to put them anywhere else.
Since the top of the fridge is obviously out in clear site, we're thinking it would be nice to put things up there that we like to look at. Our cookbook collection, for instance. Or maybe our pretty serving bowls filled with fresh fruit. Possibly some jars of dry ingredients from our pantry.
Then again, we also like the idea of having one - just one! - space completely clear of kitchen paraphernalia. Having an open fridge-top might help our kitchen feel more open and less cluttered.
What do you keep on top of the fridge?
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serving trays and bottles sparkling water.
a batman bank and a tea pot
Absolutely nothing.
kimg924: Not a bad idea, though.
www.thebitterfoodie.blogspot.com
Our pet gold fish!
All my bottles of alcohol. I hate it! But there is no place else for them.
My fridge looks a lot like yours-- a crockpot, dutch oven, and some other pots that are too big for the cabinets in my tiny kitchen. We also keep our reusable grocery bags up there
Not very much! I'm too short to really see what's up there so I don't think of it as usable space. I think currently there's a notepad that got dumped up there when someone else was helping me pick up the kitchen in a hurry and maybe the tupperware I put half of a huge bag of catfood in when I buy it.
the coffee cup of grease/fat. My kitties found it on the counter and so i had to put it UP UP UP and out of their view. How do you keep a cat off the counter anyways? BTW, spraying them with water does not work. :/
Paper plates, napkins and a tupperware filled with my baby girls bath toys (she is still small enough to be bathed in the kitchen sink).
I think I have that exact same pitcher.
I have built-in cabinets over my fridge, and there's only a very slim space where I slide in my pizza stone.
We have our microwave up there, along with some spare pans, and pot holders.
Cereal boxes, scale, giant bowl (for dough-rising), smaller giant bowl, and one pyrex roasting pan. I dug up an old cabinet organizer to make an impromptu shelf, allowing me to give the appearance that the above-fridge real estate is some semblance of organized instead of mostly just hosting everything too big for a proper cabinet spot.
A stereo, the dog's leash and A LOT of canvas bags.
My microwave lives on top of my fridge, because I only have one narrow counter. It's awkward, but we don't microwave that often, and I've gotten used to it.
Slippintrippn84: You need The Blender Defender
Box of corks that I'm saving to send in and trade for cork tiles.
http://embritadesign.blogspot.com
On top of the fridge: the colander (easy to reach from the sink) and mixing bowls. I also have above-the-fridge cabinets, where I store my once-in-a-blue-moon appliances/gadgets.
serving trays, take out menus, dog treats, and hockey tickets.
turkish coffee set, a few bottles of booze, two or three cookbooks, stacks of paper with recipes printed on them, dust...
in other words, a complete mess.
That's where we keep the wheat and rye berries for grinding into flour. Ad well as a few glass bottles to be used for storing grains or other bulk items.
A goldfish would be lovely! If only we had the room to spare.
a slow cooker and a rice cooker - but i do use both regularly!
wow, i thought the AT crowd would be anti-stuff on top of the fridge!
i'm also surprised people put microwaves up there. only because i had a friend who did that... and she nuked wax which then fell all over her chest resulting in very bad burns/scars.
i have a cabinet over my fridge (like the photo actually) so if i put anything up there, i can't open the cabinet. so nothing resides there.
My ceramic mixing bowls, Le Creuset ceramic baker, a cake stand, colanders, brioche molds, espresso cups and saucers, and small charlotte molds. All arranged somewhat prettily, or so I like to think.
And all stacked just so, so that I can still open the cabinet above.
As there are cupboards above it, all I store there are some trays.
Since it tends to be warm, you want to be careful what you keep there.
3 canisters of grains, teas, crock pot, coffee grinder
a serving tray and trivets.
I have my microwave over my fridge too --- and the only thing I use it for is heating wax so that is a scary story 2T! But my fridge is short and it's not that much higher now than the last place I lived in where the microwave was built in over the oven, so I'm not too worried.
On top of the microwave is a boston fern, and a pretty galvanized watering can.
Our above-the-fridge cabinet is as deep as the fridge--so no "top of the fridge" space to clutter up, and plenty of storage hidden behind cabinet doors!
Over-flow cereal that won't fit in the adjacent cabinet, paper towels, and twelve-packs of soda....oh, & a lot of dust :)
My grandmother's sterling flatware; service for 16 plus a ridiculously large array of serving pieces. All in a huge wooden chest.
I hate the above-fridge-cabinets. They're so tiny and out of the way that almost nothing fits in them and you have to use a stool to get to them - yet if you do the practical thing and use the wide expanse of the uncovered fridge to store stuff, you can never open the cabinets! I'd rather have a shelf, I really would.
Right now the top of my fridge is covered in giant mixing bowls and colanders. There simply isn't anywhere else to keep them.
When I was very little, if the kids got in a fight over a toy my mom would tell us the martians took it and then hide it on top of the fridge. :D
kitchenaid stand mixer and a Andy Warhol Museum snow globe of a blue cat that my brother got me (not sure where else to put that one ha).
My fridge top is currently occupied by my empty glass jars and bottles, a big improvement over my previous hodgepodge setup. I think it's hard to fill your visible fridge top with things that are nice to look at but that you use infrequently enough to be worth storing in such a difficult-to-access place. I'm not sure how people get dutch ovens, etc. up there!
A teapot, kitchen scale, a small canister (from a set of 4) and a Teddy bear cookie jar.
A wooden tray filled with clean kitchen towels. Nothing else fits - the cabinet over the fridge is too big.
I honestly expected more microwaves. I have one up there, too, in front of the useless tiny cabinets (I do have something in those cabinets that I know I wouldn't need more than once a year, can't even remember what). I'm short, so I am very careful taking stuff out of there (and use my little step stool if it will be super hot).
I also keep my cereal up there, because there's not any other space for it.
And a flashlight.
White tray, bamboo steamer, dutch oven.
Bottles that are too tall to fit in the cabinets.
Trivets, sandwich bags, aluminum foil and plastic wrap, bins for flour, sugar and brown sugar, and those long lighters you use to light candles and BBQ grills - for some reason I always have about 5 that barely spark, and this is where they're kept.
2T mentioned it above...but it poses a good question. For those of us that have cabinets above our fridges, do you use just the cabinet and have nothing in front on top of the fridge? or do you use the top of the fridge and not use the cabinet? or do you use both and then have to take items off the the top of the fridge every time you want to get to the cabinet? Does anyone have a way of using both without having the hassle of laboriously cleaning off the top of the fridge item by item? (Or am I dreaming?)
Kitchenaid, food processor and ice cream maker, plus 2 teapots.
I'm short, so I try to avoid putting anything on top of the fridge because I can't see up there! I have tiny cabinets above the fridge that I put my vases in (where else do you keep a bud vase?). The only thing on top of my fridge is the giant 36 cup electric coffee urn that I actually use to brew spiced cider during the holidays. The box it's in is big enough for me to see. :)
Anything we don't want the dog to get into while we are out. She's too smart for our own good . . .
My Christmas tree.
I live in a tiny apartment with no built in closets and I have a 4.5ft tall Christmas tree (which splits into 2 pieces) that I store above my fridge when it's not the holidays.
I have a wire wine stand up there, but I have to leave room for the cats to use as an in-between spot between the counter and cabinet tops!
Cereal that we eat every morning. Chocolates that we want to "hide" so we DON'T eat them every morning. Seems odd but somehow it works.
We have the classic useless over-fridge cabinets. They hold our ice cream maker and a set of nice glasses that I don't use very often. Because the things in front of the fridge aren't too big or heavy, it's easy to push them to the side when I want to get at the cabinet doors.
How do you guys put your microwave on top of the fridge?? I'm 5'6" and if my microwave was up there, I wouldn't even be able to reach the food to get it out!
There was another post about this a while ago.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/good-questions/good-question-space-above-the-fridgelos-angeles-057938
I have my radio and then some big things that we don't use at all (but that we aren't ready to part with yet) on the top of the fridge. We keep small appliances that don't get regular use in the cabinets above the fridge--the large food processor, fry daddy, blender, the waffle maker when we aren't on a waffle kick. My husband is tall enough that he can get things out of the cabinet without the stepladder. The cabinet doors are high enough that they clear everything on top of the fridge except for one large plastic bowl.
Pretty much all of my appliances: pressure/slow cooker, bread machine, canning supplies, juicer, dehydrator...!
I store an extremely large butcher block chopping board that doesn't fit in the cabinets and I only use when preparing large meals (which is not often) and on top of that a stainless bread box.
I have a few wire baskets filled with fruit/onions/potatos, my kitchen plant, and usually a baguette or some other oddly shaped loaf of bread. I try to keep the less than aesthetically pleasing kitchen items in the cupboards, (a constant battle with my more utilitarian roommates).
My microwave oven.
Our ove the fridge cabinet is built in- technically, the whole cabinetry is a solid piece built into the wall. Cabinet with shelving underneath, and a hole in the middle for a half height fridge, and then above is another cabinet. The above cabinet has a vent right to the outside, and is not insulated. Hence, I keep my tools, light bulbs, extra paper towels, etc. up there. I need a chair to get them, but it's not that often.
Crock-pot and pile of placemats.
since space is uber limited everywhere in out kitchen since it's the size of most people entrances- i keep all our canisters of pasta and beans and the flours and a cup that has the scissors, can opener, cheese slicer.as well as the olive oil jug. basically anything i need handy without it being on the counter
squidlette: The Blender Defender FTW. Haaaaaa hahaha!
crackers, mixing bowls, and some antique cannisters.
our microwave since we have like no counterspace! and a couple bottles of wine.
In my tiny kitchen of my tiny apartment, on the top of my tiny fridge there are : take-out menus under the cooling rack, on the cooling-rack there is a big wooden salad bowl with onions and french shallots, then on the side some Perrier bottles.
Good thing we don't have a cat..
@sagekitten85 I think a lot of the people who put microwaves on top of their refrigerators have smaller fridges. I couldn't imagine putting a microwave on top of my parents fridge but my fridge is much smaller and I can easily see over the top of of it.
That being said I keep my microwave up there and then some shot glasses which don't have a home live on top of that.
Two baskets that hold bags of snacks out of sight.
Another microwave here! Again, it's not a really tall frig; the top is about eye level for me. Small kitchen, small frig (though I'm pretty sure that this is what used to be a "normal" sized frig. It's the new ones that are huge!)
It makes getting something hot out of the microwave a little awkward, but not horrible. We use it for reheating leftovers and steaming frozen vegetables--that's about it. Since we got an electric kettle, we don't even heat water in it anymore. Oh, and heating up herb-and-rice hot pads. Ahhh.
Right now I have some big mixing bowls drying upside down on top of the microwave--just about arms reach for me without a step stool. It was one of those "wash as you go" moments when I realized that I had too many dirty bowls to keep cooking, stuff cooking on the stove (the normal drying "rack"), and no place to put anything down!
Two of the flattish ikea baskets; one holds onions and spuds, the other holds the weekly supply of bread. My fridge top has never looked so organised before!
The tiny overfridge cabinet holds some extra wine glasses and the larger food processer (yes, we have two! the joys of merging households!).
Coffee maker, paper towels, waffle maker, and empty cookie tins
The wok, as it fits absolutely nowhere else, & a basket of dog treats.
I kind of need to be able to reach the cabinets above the fridge--at least one of the two, which holds our snack & pasta area. So we don't keep much above the fridge--there's an ever present bottle of plum brandy, and then at most also a box of crackers, bread, spare bottle of wine. The fridge also gets dusty, so it would be counterproductive to store pans, etc up there.
Junk mail and a collander full of my onions and potatoes
speakers!!!
I run the audio cable down the back and along the backing of the cabinets and it comes up just behind my microwave where I keep an iPod dock.
A microwave and a bouquet of flowers.