Kitchen Drawers

As many of you know, I hate my kitchen. The person who designed the cabinets in my kitchen was a man who had never been in a kitchen in his entire life. Not only is it a bad design it's tiny. My laundry room is huge though. I don't know why they didn't make the laundry room smaller and the kitchen bigger. Oh well, I am trying to make the best of it. I think the worst part of my kitchen is the drawers. I have very few of them and they are only 6 inches wide on the inside. I know what you're thinking, "6 inches? Thats ridiculous, you're exaggerating, no one would build a 6 inch wide kitchen drawer. It would be useless!"

Now that you know I'm not exaggerating I know what you're thinking "That is really stupid! Where do you put your silverware?" Up until recently I had it on a shelf in my pantry. Which is also where my pans and appliances are since I don't have a cabinet for them and my food is shoved into one little lazy suzan, my cook books, baggies, tin foil, etc is all in the laundry room. I know you're jealous of my awesome kitchen situation.

I got so sick of my silverware being in the freaking pantry (which is more in the hallway than the kitchen) I decided I had to come up with a solution. I searched all over the internet for a small silverware organizer, I can't be the only one with stupid drawers, right? Well, I found a custom one that I could order, but it was a little spendy for what it was. But that got me thinking more on the lines of making one rather than buying one. So that brings us to version 1.0, or I guess technically version 1.5 since I had to recut the notches so my knives would fit.

I made it out of a card board box and covered it with contact paper so no one (ok so that I) wouldn't get card board cuts when trying to get a fork. It got the job done but not very well. It was very flimsy and the knives bent it and would slide under when we opened and closed the drawer. But it got the ball rolling.

I was out cleaning my garage since I actually have stuff out there now (which I HATE, but there is space for it and my car) since I don't have any storage space in the house. I still had a book self sitting out there that the movers broke. When I saw that I had 5 of the backs for the book shelves, they were cheap) it gave me the idea for version 2.0. This material was less flimsy and much thinner.

SUCCESS. My silverware now sits neatly in my drawer. It's not pretty so there may be a version 2.5 :) One of the biggest problems with the first one is that it slid around and the long pieces would move with very little pressure, it also lifted up really easy so the knives would escape from their home. I found a solution for both.

In the front, since you can see it, I opted for clear bumpers. It keeps them from moving side to side.

In the back, since you can't see it unless you stand funny like I did to take the picture, I used a little bit of masking tape. Which keeps it from moving up and down (and side to side really). 

It has been a few weeks and it's still working perfectly. I think I may take it out and put the contact paper on it to make it a little more pretty and cleanable, if this gets dirty I would really be able to clean it off. 

 I am very proud of my little organizer. I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Talk to you soon :)