I Sent a Pro Organizer Photos of My “Awkwardly Deep” Kitchen Cabinet, and Her Amazing $10 Storage Fix Changed Everything

My husband and I recently moved into a new home, and in my excitement to have a moderately bigger kitchen, I failed to notice two things: 1) We have substantially less counterspace. 2) We have a (very) weird cabinet. It’s the one in the corner — I’m sure some of you have this cabinet, too. Part of it is easily accessible through the cabinet doors, and the other part of it falls back into the recesses of our cabinetry, with no way to get in aside from pulling everything out and sticking my whole arm back there. Why do cabinets like this exist? I’ll never know. 

But since I had no intention of knocking out the cabinet wall between both sides of the corner, I reached out to a professional organizer. Luckily, Shaniece Jones, organization expert and founder of Closet Therapy, has seen cabinets like this before.

“The hard-to-reach corners are always tricky when it comes to organizing cabinets, but I’ve found they’re best used for items you don’t need every day, like holiday mugs, baking supplies, and overflow of canned goods,” she said.

She had another perfect solution for me: lazy Susans. “They’re perfect for storing things like peanut butter, sauces, or cans because you can just spin to grab what you need without having to move everything around,” she says. Specifically, she recommends this stunning bamboo version from The Container Store. 

Jones also suggested these adjustable pull-out drawers and these acrylic pantry organizers with handles, but I opted against them because I didn’t want to have to move everything out of the way to pull out the drawer or organizer. I wanted the path of least resistance to accessing things in the back of my cabinet.

So off to the store I went to find some similar options. I measured the depth of my cabinet first to be sure the lazy Susans I bought would fit in there. At first, I purchased a single two-tiered lazy Susan because apparently I forgot that the cabinet has multiple shelves, and a second tier would hit the shelf above it. Oops! Back to the store.

This time, I bought three single-level 10-inch lazy Susans with a nonslip traction pad on the surface so things don’t move around when it spins. We’ve been using this particular cabinet to store food we don’t want to keep in our not-climate-controlled pantry because the food will get gross, and because we want it closer to where we cook.

Working shelf by shelf, I took all the food out of the cabinet and placed one lazy Susan onto the empty space in the back part of each shelf. Then, I filled the trays with canned items and other smaller things like peanut butter, pasta sauce, black beans, drink powders, and candy.

The top shelf is hard for me to reach, so I used it to store a few stacked oversized bowls deep into the corner that I don’t use super often, and closer to the opening, measuring cups, a cheese serving tray, and mixing bowls. I didn’t use a lazy Susan there because the items are larger, I reach into it less frequently, and I wanted to use them where they’d really count. As I refilled the bottom two shelves with our food, I made sure everything went back in with some organization. Now, we even have some extra space!

I’m pretty thrilled with how the cabinet looks and functions now. The lazy Susans are easy to reach and maximize the space in ways I didn’t think were possible. Now, I just need to decide what to do with the third one. (Well, and the two-tiered one!)

Buy: The Container Store Kyoto Bamboo Turntable, $19.99

This article originally appeared on Apartment Therapy. See it there: I Sent a Pro Organizer Photos of My “Awkwardly Deep” Kitchen Cabinet, and Her Amazing $10 Storage Fix Changed Everything