Cottage-style kitchens are an increasingly popular option when it comes to creating an attractive yet functional kitchen layout, but what about the clutter? These cottage kitchens usually rely on an open layout so that everything is easily accessible regardless of what you need. In lieu of bulky cabinets and endless drawers, these kitchens make heavy use of open shelving and pegboards to hold everything. It can be a very attractive look for your kitchen and a pretty functional layout as well, but if you’re not careful, it’s also an invitation for chaos.
The ugly truth is that cabinets and drawers became popular because they keep all of the clutter and disarray hidden safely away and add a bit of built-in organization to the pandemonium of kitchen layouts. Do away with most of the cabinets, and all that clutter is left out in the open. Fortunately, there are ways to tame it. It does require a bit of thought in your approach, though.
Be Smart With Your Shelving
One of the big traps that people fall into with cottage kitchen shelving is trying to maximize its display properties without thinking about how to maximize efficiency. The look of plates, glasses, and various other bits of kitchen must-haves arranged neatly on shelves is certainly appealing. If you’re not careful, though, you’re going to end up with at least some of your shelves being overcrowded and a pain to work with as you sort through them to find exactly what you’re looking for.
The key to successful shelving is to arrange everything so that it’s not only appealing to look at but also on the shelves for a particular reason. Before placing anything on shelves, stop and think about which shelves those specific items would be best on. Consider where in the kitchen you’ll use them the most, and install shelves in those areas so that your prep tools can be near your prep station and your baking tools can be near your oven. Supplementing your shelving with under-table drawers, cabinets, and other unobtrusive storage solutions can also aid with this without ruining the cottage aesthetic you’ve created with your shelving.
A Place for Everything
Pegboards are another common sight in cottage-style kitchens, but they can become a messy array of items stuck up seemingly at random if you aren’t careful. It can take a little while to find an ideal layout of your spoons, tools, and other pegboard items, but once you have it then you should do everything you can to keep it. Even a few items placed incorrectly can throw off the entire arrangement and lead to your perfect organization falling into clutter.
A great option here is to get everything placed on your pegboard and then carefully trace around the various items lightly with a pencil. Once you have outlines of everything, remove it all and take the pegboard down. Carefully fill in those outlines with paint, using a variety of colors that match or accent the dominant colors in your kitchen. For added flair, paint a small stripe on the handles of your spoons and other tools that match the space you filled in for it on the pegboard to make it easy to see when anything is out of place.
Designing Your Dream Cottage Kitchen
The more thought you put into the design and functionality of your shelving and other cottage kitchen storage solutions, the easier it will be to avoid clutter in the future.
If you have questions about buying or selling your home, you may contact me to see how I can help you.
Michelle Lohman, Associate Broker
Realty One Group
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