Not Bins, Not Lazy Susans: There's A Smarter Solution For Tidy Deep Cabinets

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Living with a kitchen that has large, deep cabinets can be a blessing and a curse. Ample storage space is always welcome, of course, and especially in a kitchen. But if your cabinets are too deep, it can be difficult to keep kitchen items organized. As anyone with an overflowing pantry or an overstocked spice rack that needs organizing knows, once things are out of sight, they're often out of mind.

While plenty of people opt for cute kitchen storage systems that involve labels, bins, and lazy susans, adding more accessories can come with its own problems. These might make your cabinet's contents more mobile, but they can also make life unwieldy, because you have to constantly remove things to access the back. 

Instead, you might want to consider a built-in solution, and look into adding sliding or rolling shelves to your kitchen cabinets. Essentially, this option involves adding a shelf that functions much like a drawer. It runs on a track that you can pull out of your deep cabinet, so you can better see what's hiding in the kitchen.

While you can theoretically add a sliding shelf to any cabinet that has enough depth, they're most functional on lower cabinets. They're ideal for storing anything that's fairly uniform in height, like spices, and some rolling shelves have a slim-lined design, with this in mind. These work especially well in any skinny cabinets — think ones that are often in the corner of your kitchen or nestled into the space next to your oven. They also work great for organizing your pots and pans, or for larger appliances you don't want to keep out on the counter, especially if you have a larger cabinet whose space isn't being used to its maximum efficiency. 

Another option is to add a rolling shelf under your sink to maximize cleaning supply storage and accessibility — but be careful. If you add these shelves to existing cabinets, you will sacrifice vertical space. If you have any overly tall appliances, cookware, or serverware, make sure you don't give up a much needed home in favor of a new organizational system. 

Adding rolling shelves to your kitchen can be done as a DIY project, using an easy at-home kit, or by hiring a professional joiner to come and re-fit sliding alternatives in place of your current shelves. However you do it, it's sure to streamline your kitchen's accessibility and make it much easier to move freely around your cabinets as needed.