My husband likes to mock-complain that my kitchen storage has taken over more and more of our house. Not content with our narrow kitchen cupboards, I converted a coat closet into a bright pantry, and then turned my attention to the dining room, where a big red cabinet and a sideboard now hold most of our dishes and glassware. I admit I may have a dish problem (I have the excuse of buying just one more "for work!") but that aside, I have found that the a small kitchen is often not the best place to store dishes anyway. Where do you store your dishes?
Taking the dishes out of the kitchen is one of the best ways to open up some space in your kitchen cupboards for dry goods storage and other things that need to stay closer to the heart of where you cook. Many cooks with small kitchens do this: Put a sideboard in the dining room, move the wineglasses, get a china cabinet.
The other benefit to this simple rearrangement, of course, is that it lets you see your dishes, if you use a glass-front cabinet. I like my dishes, especially the serving pieces. I like having them on display in my red china cabinet. It keeps them out of the way in the kitchen, and it uses otherwise empty space in the dining room.
Also, by the way, our cabinet is from IKEA. It's the LINNARP cabinet with two glass doors.
• Find it: LINNARP cabinet, $249 at IKEA
What about you? Where do you store dishes? Have you moved them out of the kitchen entirely? Or do you like to keep them close to hand?
Related: Looking for Wall-Mounted Plate Rack for Dish Storage
(Images: Faith Durand)
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We store the bulk of our everyday dishes in the kitchen, in cupboards close to the sink. Our china, however, is stored in a sideboard in the dining room, along with a 3rd set of plain, white dishes. Er, it now occurs to me that I have a 'dish problem' as I can't even remember the rationale for the 3rd set! :D
"Broom closet" next to the stove, across from the sink/dishwasher. I installed shelves in there and it's a lot more useful for this instead of brooms.
I get the same complaint from my boyfriend, and the only thing spilling into other parts of the apartment are my cookbooks. My dishes are stored in the heinously ugly cabinets in the kitchen.
I'm currently blessed with more cabinets then even I can use but in the past extra dishes have creeped into the hall closet and "my half" of the entertainment center (closed doored) as my SO would call it. I only have about 10 dvds, but I have three cake platters and the have to go some where!
Even I have less space in my kitchen :) still have managed somehow
Our every day dishes are in the kitchen cabinets as well as about 1/3 of our serving pieces. The rest of the serving pieces and the formal china are in the buffet in the dining room. My husband was really against having the formal china but I love it and totally plan on using it more often now that we have a house.
What I have is a glass problem. We have enough beer glasses to almost fill an entire cabinet in the kitchen (the rest of the space is baby bottles). People started buying us beer glasses and now we have enough for a large party for beer tasting. Strangly they are all good glasses so I dont want to get rid of them.