5 Mistakes You’re Making with Your Kitchen’s Corner Cabinet

Shifrah Combiths
Shifrah Combiths
With five children, Shifrah is learning a thing or two about how to keep a fairly organized and pretty clean house with a grateful heart in a way that leaves plenty of time for the people who matter most. Shifrah grew up in San Francisco, but has come to appreciate smaller town life in Tallahassee, Florida, which she now calls home. She's been writing professionally for twenty years and she loves lifestyle photography, memory keeping, gardening, reading, and going to the beach with her husband and children.
updated Aug 19, 2021
pinterest
comments
We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing.
White Kitchen
Credit: Margaret Rajic | Stocksy

The corner cabinet is probably the least-loved cabinet in your entire kitchen. Am I right? It’s awkward, impossible to access, deep, dark, and has a reputation for just not being super useful. Too often, we write off this space as a necessary evil, unintentionally using it as a black hole where our ice cream maker and fondue set go to live undisturbed for all of eternity.

I want to change that! Because wasting valuable cabinet space is, well, a waste! And your corner cabinet actually has loads of potential: You just have to unlock it. Understanding what not to do in this cabinet is the first step of taking charge of it and putting it to good use.

Here are some mistakes you might be making with your kitchen’s corner cabinets.

1. Failing to buy organizers.

We usually hate to tell people that they absolutely have to buy organizers for a space (we’d rather help you save the money and figure something else out), but the corner cabinet is a special monster and it needs organizers to be tamed. The good news: You don’t have to spend a lot on a custom option. No, there are a few great, inexpensive ways (see some here!), to create order out of corner-cabinet chaos. 

Read more: The 5 Best Organizers to Finally Help You Get Your Corner Cabinets Under Control

2. Failing to get baskets.

Yes, baskets are technically organizers, but we find them to be so incredibly useful, we wanted them to get their own call-out. And we like them even more when they’re used with, say, a turntable or pull-out wire racks. We also like baskets if your corner cabinets just happen to have shelves inside. The baskets create a sort of makeshift drawer, if you will.

3. Storing stuff you shouldn’t. 

No matter how cleverly you use your corner cabinets, over-filling them will eventually turn them into messy caves. The first step of organizing these cabinets should involve pulling everything out and evaluating what you really need to keep and store in them. Declutter or re-home what you don’t need or that can live elsewhere. 

4. Not appreciating “less valuable” real estate.

When we talk about organization, we often discuss “prime real estate” to refer to storage spaces that are the most accessible. These are the places we want to put our most-used items. It’s easy to overlook the opposite types of space: the hardest spaces to get to, like, yep, corner cabinets (especially bottom ones!). And while we joked about that fondue set and ice cream maker, it does mean that you can store them in the kitchen without clogging up more usable space. Just make sure you’re storing things that you actually will use at some point. If not, see tip 3 above!

5. Not thinking outside the (cabinet) box.

 If you’re in a position to make design choices about your kitchen cabinet setup, consider corner drawers rather than cabinets.

How do you organize your kitchen corner cabinets? Tell us in the comments below.