Can’t Find Anything in Your Kitchen Cabinets? Try This

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A kitchen cabinet can look full while quite a bit of it is still empty.

Plates cover the shelf. Bowls get stacked on top of them. Mugs fill whatever space is left, and a couple of cans end up behind everything else.

Meanwhile, there is a perfectly usable gap between the tops of those things and the shelf above.

The trouble starts when you need something from the bottom. The bowls come off the plates. A mug gets moved out of the way. Something else lands on the counter while you reach for the can hiding at the back.

Then everything goes back into roughly the same arrangement.

If the wasted space is underneath a fixed shelf, under-shelf storage can use that gap without adding another surface above the dishes.

But when the empty space is directly above plates, bowls, mugs, or pantry food, another level can make more sense.

Turn the Empty Gap Into Another Shelf

An adjustable shelf riser gives you a surface above the things already sitting in the cabinet.

Plates can stay underneath while bowls sit above them. Short jars and cans can go below with other pantry food on top. Instead of building a tower from whatever happens to fit together, you get two separate levels.

That makes a difference the next time you want a plate. You can take one without lifting a stack of bowls first.

The riser expands from about 16 to 28 inches, so it does not have to stretch across the entire cabinet. Its height can also be set at roughly 5½, 6¼, or 7 inches. That matters because the useful gap above a stack of plates is not necessarily the same as the gap above mugs or food containers.

The two sections can also be used separately, nested, stacked, or arranged in an L shape. A wide cabinet might use the full span, while a smaller one may only need a raised section over the dishes.

There is no reason to fill every available inch. The useful arrangement is the one that leaves enough room to take things out without dismantling everything around them.

Keep the Things You Use Where You Can See Them

Cabinet depth causes another small nuisance. Once things start forming a second row, the items at the back become easy to overlook.

A riser can help here too. Something placed on the raised level remains visible behind shorter items instead of disappearing completely.

Spice jars are particularly good at finding those hidden spaces. If yours have already escaped the cabinet and started occupying the worktop instead, a magnetic fridge rack can keep spices off the counter.

A shelf riser will not give the cabinet more cubic space. It changes how much of the space you already have is practical to use.

And if getting one plate no longer involves temporarily relocating the bowls, that empty gap above them was probably worth using.