apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I had the same problem, and solved it with a wall mounted pot rack from Enclume. It holds 2 complete sets of cookware plus assorted utilities....

Not a great idea unless you want a good thick layer of grease and soot on your cookware, and if you want to bang your head on pans and get into fights with wiggly s-hooks.

Consider sliding drawer/basket inserts for one of your base cabinets. These make more efficient use of the space and eliminate the awkward head-in-cabinet thing. Sorry I don't have a specific system or source to recommend. Perhaps Ikea products can be adapted for your cabinets?

I have a really small kitchen with limited cabinet space as well, and I keep my pans in my oven and my pots in my dishwasher. I wash my dishes by hand so this setup works for me. I can imagine it wouldn't work so well if you use your dishwasher often.

I think Alan's suggestion of installing sliding drawers or baskets in your base cabinets is a great one. I'm currently thinking of doing that and am considering Ikea's RATIONELL series. Ultimately, though, I think I'll need to do some deep cleaning in my kitchen and pack away some dishes and cups.

i love hanging pot racks! i think they are so much more practical than shoving the pots into cupboards, esp if you cook a lot (they DO NOT get greasy). if you click on my name and go to the second page of my flicker page, you can see how i've hung my pot rack. i think that rather than the kitchen "bleeding out" into the next room, it offers a visual full stop. i got my hanging rack at bbb.

Thanks for these helpful ideas. I have considered drawers for the cupboard I currently use. Container Store sells a very wide pull-out drawer that could be nice. Still, I have got a LOT of bulky stuff. The pot rack was really an idea to get the lighter weight things out of the way. But I have a full set of Le Creuset (a gift from my dad who got it for free), and while I love cooking with it, I hate lugging it from place to place and find that the two largest pieces are used very infrequently. I fear infrequently will become never if I start storing the larger pieces above my cabinets as one poster suggested. I know, I know, these are good problems to have...

Cameron,

I definitely would not hand pot racks over your head anywhere where you walk in the kitchen. Which means that, if you are really set on getting them, they would have to be to the side. The only place I can see for that is over the open counter space. They might help to divide the kitchen from the rest of the room, and could possibly turn out to be even a bit ornamental there. You could get something that would just cluster the pots at one and/or the other end of the counter. But if you use that counter to sit at, then I wouldn't put them even there....

Ah, and I see that even Abby, who loves hanging pot racks, has hers hanging very near to a counter space. So she doesn't walk under them.

Cameron, I have the same problem! Nix the pot rack idea! With a similar setting as your condo with a 9' ceiling. I tried the hanging pot rack but because of the low ceiling, it really crowded my kitchen. I ended up taking it down after a year. Now I just store pots stacked inside cabinets, with the lids stacked beside them. It works for the time being until/if I find a resolution. I too, have given the sliding cabinets some thought....but being on a budget may make it harder.

Good Luck!

i, too, immediately thought of sliding drawer inserts for your cabinets - I ahd them at one house and they were a total dream. Next place I have freedom to renovate the cabinets I'm planning on doing this!

The only place I can see for your rack is over the open counter space too.

I keep my pots and pans in the drawer under the stove. It's not an ideal place, but I have extremely limited cabinetry. The people who designed the kitchens for the smallest apts in my complex didn't consider usability at all. I had to build a custom silverware organizer because the drawers are too narrow for even the slimmest of prefab trays.

My intended solution for my pots/pans is to buy a deep set of cabinets, like a wine bar or a narrow buffet and store my lesser used pots and pans in it...and keep it in my dining area.

Skip the pot rack :-)

Take equipment you rarely use and store somewhere else...in a linen or coat closet. (Take a picture of it in it's new home, then stick the picture on your fridge so you don't forget you have all that equipment).

The stuff you use frequently store under the kitchen sink. Remove all the cleaners, hardware, old spray paint, etc, from under your sink and put it somewhere else. Clean the cabinet, stick down some contact paper, and store those pots right there.

I had a TINY kitchen for ten years, and it took me EIGHT of those years to realize that I could really USE the space under the sink.

My life changed forever once I did that, lol

ohjodi, That's brilliant!! I've had the same block in imagination... until just now, reading your post. :) Strange, the assumptions we carry around about what must go under the sink!

I wanted my pots and pans to hang, so they wouldn't bang and clang, and so I wouldn't have to move one to find the one I wanted, but I never liked the messy look of pot racks.

I used big cup hooks and mounted them inside my cabinets. Now I just open a door and the pans hang vertically inside. the shelves inside the cabinets were only half depth so they didn't interfere, and I used those for the seldom used casserole pans.

I also hung inexpensive curtain rods on the inside of the doors and those hold all my lids.

Wish I could post a picture to show how easy and well it works