The UK is seeing something of a surge in home renovations, as people seek to invest more time and money improving their home than ever before. Renovation spending is up by a third; kitchens, the most popular form of home renovation, are seeing around 15% more spent in comparison to 2019. Of course, not everyone has the funds for a complete kitchen overhaul – but some simple changes can have a massive impact. Here we’ll be looking specifically at our kitchen cookware, and some clever ways to change up the storage of your pots and pans.
Overhead Pots and Pans
If you’re a little short on space, or if you fancy adding a little more dimensionality to your kitchen, you could utilise a pan organiser hung from your ceiling. Meat-hooks or S-hooks would be used to hang your pans, giving you an easy way to grab what you need without sifting through stacks.
Overhead solutions also have a throwback element to them; clothes airers in smaller terraced homes were commonly attached to the kitchen ceiling, accessed by pulley. You see less of them today, but their aesthetic influence remains – and hanging your pans on a lower-hanging rack can evoke that same, traditional feel.
Wall Hangings
Your kitchen might have too high or low a ceiling, or might be too oddly shaped to accommodate an organiser rack. But hanging your pans can still be a great solution for improving access, as well as showing off your swanky new pan sets. You could install a bar or rack on a wall, and hang your pans against it; you could even install the rack behind your hob, for true ease of access and less juggling cookware when you’re in the middle of cooking up a storm. If you’re well and truly strapped for even wall space, you could apply the same thinking to the inside of larger kitchen cupboards.
Lid Storage Solutions
Storing pots and pans can become particularly difficult when their associated lids come into play. Keeping pans with their lids can make stacking them impossible, and also make for an ungainly tussle for your desired pan amongst other items. Hanging solutions also don’t take into account where to put the lids, necessitating a clever approach to lid storage.
With a spare shelf in a kitchen cupboard, you could use a dish rack to stack lids vertically, making them easy to distinguish from one another and easier to pick out in a pinch. You could also use retaining hooks or clips to hang your lids on the inside surface of cupboard doors, increasing your available space.
Open Shelving
Lastly, doing away with cupboard doors altogether could revolutionise your kitchen and your cooking. Rather than crouching down to access pans from a dark corner of your kitchen units, install shelves above your worktop for the open storage of commonly used items such as pans and utensils.
