If your kitchen is like mine, then you have a bunch of small appliances – toaster, kettle, juicer, coffee machine, food processor, Thermomix, slow cooker, rice cooker… Aargh! Although each of these individually are rightly referred to as “small” appliances, put them all on your kitchen bench and suddenly your bench disappears under the clutter.
The good thing is that most of these appliances don’t get used every day, and so tucking them away in the bottom of your kitchen cupboards and dragging them out when needed is a reasonable choice, even though the one you want always seems to be at the back of the cupboard behind all the rest.
The only difficulty with this approach is that some appliances just aren’t designed to fit within existing cupboards. If you can, you might need to remove shelves from your designated appliance cupboard, or at least cut out a section from an upper shelf, so you can fit your appliances in.
Another option is to use the bottom of your pantry. Most built-in pantries have bigger shelves at the bottom, and often the space between the floor and the lowest shelf is big enough to accommodate taller small appliances.
If you’re redesigning your kitchen, it’s a good opportunity to control this element of kitchen chaos. One very popular solution is to have a cupboard at bench height that has enough space for your most frequently used appliances. When you need them, you open the door/s and either use them inside the cupboard, or pull them forward onto the bench. Even better is if you can have some power points inside the cupboard.
A recent design trend in new homes today is to have a small, separate butler’s pantry located off the kitchen. This usually includes a sink and space for commonly used appliances to be readily accessible.
Finally, if you really can’t find a way to hide your small appliances, then why not consider splashing out and buying some stylish, coordinated appliances to match your kitchen? Appliance design, particularly for the frequently used ones like kettles and toasters, has become a lot more varied in recent years, so if you can’t hide it, flaunt it!