The Tiny Miracle You Need to Organize Your Upper Corner Cabinets
Even if you don’t believe in miracles, you probably believe in tiny miracles. They’re the little things that, against all odds, happen and make a huge difference in our lives. A tiny miracle can be a recipe that gets dinner on the table during the most hectic weekday, the little hack that finally organizes your fridge, a newfound motto that helps you stay on top of kitchen messes, or anything else that seems like a gift from above. To help us all start the new year off right, we asked some influential bloggers and cooks to share their biggest tiny miracles.
Chances are, you’ve Pinned one of Jennifer Jones’ photos before. Her smart, colorful approach to organization always has an element of DIY to it, and her website, I Heart Organizing, is chock-full of storage tips, house tours, and printable shortcuts to inspire you to get organized. With so many great ideas, I was curious to find out what her own personal tiny miracle would be. Naturally, it’s a storage hack that she made herself.
“We have an upper corner cabinet that was always a challenger to keep tidy — a dark hole where we would never know what was lurking in the back,” Jones says. She needed a solution that would make that area accessible, without breaking the bank, that would look decent, too. Her fix: DIY turntables.
“I picked up two round common boards at the home improvement store, then used shelf liner, turntable hardware, and pulls to turn them into lazy Susans,” says Jones. Not just any turntables, the marble-look shelf liner and silver-toned handles make them look like fancy trays inside her cabinet, versus the utilitarian ready-made styles you usually find. But, unlike trays, they let her access everything in her cabinet.
“By adding these two large turntables to the corner cabinet shelving, I can now easily spin everything from front to back, so nothing is lost!” Jones says. She uses them for storage containers, oils, salt and pepper, other condiments, and more. The shelf liners makes the surfaces totally wipeable, and besides looking fancy, the handles make it easier to turn them.
See the full tutorial: Organized Kitchen Corner Cabinet with a DIY Lazy Susan at I Heart Organizing
“The lazy Susan solution definitely saves us time in the morning! The food containers on the second shelf are what we use every day for leftovers and lunch packing, and they’re never misplaced or lost. The bottom shelf has all our basic cooking stuff, plus my vitamins on the far side, so it’s easy to spin and find salt for cooking or syrup for pancakes,” says Jones. And the best part? Her family can easily use it too. “This system has been so easy to maintain, and works just as well a year later as it did the day I added the turntables.”
Jones liked the idea so much she’s applied them to other spaces in her home: she uses small turntables in her fridge (it unearths all the condiments that would get lost in the back on the upper shelf) and some in other cabinets for the rest of her spices and oils. And since she told her readers about the idea, she’s gotten feedback from people who use the same system for coffee mugs and creating baking stations. Smart — and nothing short of a miracle!