Getting a new kitchen is exciting stuff. Whether you’re remodeling or building new, careful planning is a must for the most used room in the house. I wrote a post awhile back about my kitchen remodel. (New Ikea Kitchen) I’ve received several requests to elaborate a bit on the kitchen cabinets, so let’s talk drawers vs. doors. More specifically, cabinets below the belt!

In 2007 I was fortunate enough to build a new home…from scratch…from the ground up. I was the general contractor for the house build, hiring the subcontractors and overseeing all the work. I also did a great deal of work on the house as well. This was my first foray into Ikea cabinets and where the love affair began. I chose to use Ikea’s cabinets in the kitchen, mud hall, two bathrooms, and the laundry room. The kitchen, living room, and dining room was one very large open space. The galley style kitchen had one wall, on which was the refrigerator, range, and wall oven and a very large island that housed the sink and most of the storage. Therefore, I had very little space for upper cabinets.

Knowing that the bulk of my storage would be under-the-counter, I chose to use drawers rather than doors with shelves. Why? Simply put…it is the best use of space and the easiest to access. I have had a kitchen full of lower cabinets that had the pull out shelves. That’s a pretty neat system, but there is way too much wasted space.

Cabinets are tricky with the use of space. You must look at them carefully, especially lower cabinets. Most lower cabinets have shelves behind the door. Dishes, pots and pans, and other items get stacked up and shoved to the back. If you don’t have pull-out shelves, you have to bend way down to see into the back of the cabinet where all kinds of crazy happens.

Even if you have the most organized cabinets on the block, the space within that lower cabinet is never efficiently used.

When it came time to design the lower cabinets for my remodel, I had no doubts that I would be using as many drawers as would fit. Choosing drawers for your lower cabinets is a much better use of space. The drawer itself usually slides to the very back of the cabinet box and can be filled with dishes and other items. If the cabinet system you use is similar to Ikea’s, the drawers fully extend providing very easy access to everything in the drawer.

Deep drawers use the most space in the cabinet box.

Organization is a dream with deep drawers in your lower cabinets. I found that emptying the dishwasher was much easier when I am putting dishes in the lower drawers, rather the stacking them high up in upper cabinets. And your kids can do this too!

Pots and pans can be neatly stacked and contained in deep drawers with or without using dividers.

Ikea offers all sorts of amazing drawer organization systems. You can check them out at Ikea.com

Whether you use Ikea’s cabinets or any other cabinets, consider using drawers instead of doors for your lower cabinets. The space is used to the maximum and organization is easy.

Here’s to kitchen love!