Kitchen Essential

Everyone has their own pet ideas on storing items that no standard kitchen unit could accommodate. For example, units don’t provide little hooks for all those rubber bands we can’t bear to throw away! So full marks to those British kitchen unit manufacturers who do look beyond merely what their Continental rivals provide, and actually try to see what the housewife really needs.

Recipes and recipe books are never provided for. Recipe cards or small notes are not easy to handle whilst making a new cake for the first time. A bulldog clip and a cup-hook attached to the underside of the wall unit solves this problem. Attach the recipe to the bulldog clip and simply hang it on the hook! Winchmore Kitchens have produced a recipe book holder which looks, when closed, like part of the pelmet concealing the strip light under the wall cupboard. When it is pulled out it holds the book — just like a mini-lectern.

Built-in larders are often valuable space- wasters. Another practical use is as a telephone booth, holding directories, message pad and a small seat.

Alternatively, it could be equipped as an office by installing a small work surface and chair, plus shelves for recipe books, household accounts and other essential kitchen notes, and a telephone. Line the walls with cork and they become a pin board for messages — an ideal area away from kitchen clutter to plan menus for the week and work out household budgets.

Hooks are the most useful aids in the kitchen. Attach them to the underside of shelves or wall units to hang cups, jugs, kitchen tools, wooden spoons and so on. Dispensers to hold foil, cling film and paper towels can be fixed to the wall between wall-hung units and the work surfaces.

A knife slot cut into the back of the worktop holds sharp kitchen knives safely. The slot should be just wide enough to take the blades, but too narrow for the handles to slip through.

Saucepan lids clatter around in the cupboards when pans are taken out. A cheap and simple solution is to stretch curtain wire in rows on the inside of the unit door and two or three lids can be securely held by each row. Tupperware make a rack to hold their lids and this, again, can be attached to the inside of a door.

For spice jars and small packets, narrow plastic racks can be bought in hardware stores or household departments and these can be fixed inside cupboard doors for efficient use of space. They should not be overloaded, however, as they could pull the door off its hinges.

Conventional waste bins take up a lot of room, either free-standing or within a cupboard. You can buy a Garbina holder that fits neatly on the inside of the sink unit door and holds bags, either polythene or heavy duty paper. It takes less space and ensures that rubbish does not stay around too long while a larger bin is filled.

A plastic grid, again easily obtainable in household departments, can be attached to unused wall space. Matching hooks can then take all those odd shaped items which belong to no specific category — for example, small watering cans, kitchen aprons and keys.

At the end of a run of units, or a peninsula, the worktop can overhang to accommodate shallow shelves below for frequently used items such as washing powders.

Plinths below base units can be a great waste of space, but some manufacturers make practical use of the space — folding steps by Bosch are stored in the plinth area and make excellent aid to reaching top cupboards.

Serious wine buffs would never store their wine in the kitchen, but those less committed wine drinkers can accommodate bottle racks; suitable pigeon holes for wine bottles are also found filling spaces between units. Thespace above the built-in fridge and microwave usefully occupied with round bottle holes.

Fresh herbs can be continuously available from a supply of little pots on the window sill. An alternative is a macrame holder suspended from the ceiling, holding a pottery dish with individual herb pots.

A free-standing fridge should not have a unit fixed directly on top of it, so there will often be a space between the top of the fridge and the underside of the wall unit. A slim car radio fixed to the underside of the wall unit is a perfect filler for this space.

A bench seat with a lift up lid is an ideal place for storing toddlers’ toys.

Saucepans, sieves, ladles, casseroles, cake racks and many other items in the batterie de cuisine can be stored on an iron frame suspended from the ceiling above this island unit. There is less chance of mislaying these things if they are on show.

A novel way of concealing electric wiring, plumbing and uneven walls, without the need to build a false wall, is a worktop and continuous back panel. Made out of one piece of laminate, the angle is post-formed or curved and the back extends up to the underside of the midway wall units.

Finally, the ultimate in hi-tech storage, Ariston of Italy produce a kitchen which seems to have the solution for many ‘where-to-put-what’ problems. Green shelves are suspended from hooks in the ceiling and walls. Under these, wire racks are attached to hold paper towels, bottles, etc. There is a double basket for cups and glasses, slide-in bulb lights protected by wire, and even a cutlery holder which slopes down when in use then folds back neatly under the shelf. Even the handles on the doors and drawers do double duty as hooks for tea towels, oven gloves, bags and so on.

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