These drawers look tame in the pictures above compared to normal! Most of our silverware is missing from the picture, but believe me when I say these drawers were usually crammed full!
I asked my handy husband if he would DIY some custom storage for the drawers & he was nice enough to oblige me! By the time he was finished, I had enough storage to condense everything in these three drawers down to just two! Let’s take a look at the finished product & then I’ll give you a quick how-to on the customized storage.
This is a front view of all the silverware drawer from front to back I have teaspoons, table spoons, salad forks, dinner forks, knives, and steak knives. The side storage is for baby utensils and serving spoons & forks.
To be honest, the above pictures only show half the silverware, here’s the real life version:
The drawer on the other side of the stove holds cooking utensils and pot holders:
After measuring the drawer & drawing out a plan, Mark created storage for my pot holders, ladles, spatulas, scrapers, ice cream scoops, & a couple of miscellaneous spaces for other utensils.
I love how much these drawers store now & how functional they are!
Now, I will attempt to share how we created these custom organizers. First, we measured the drawers & then I sketched out a plan for the sizes of each bin & what would go in them (taking into account the size of the slats). Next, because I wanted these dividers to be removable, in case I ever changed my mind on what I want to store where, (I’m tired. Does that make sense?) Mark had to come up with a way to make them removable.
Here’s what he came up with:
First, he took my measurements & nailed these small spacers onto one side of the drawer. Eventually, the slats would slide into them.
Because we have storage going both vertically & horizontally in this drawer, he cut a piece of wood (we used lattice molding) the depth of the drawer & hot glued on more spacers. These would be parallel to the ones attached to the drawer.
To make it stable, he routed some space in between the middle section of this piece.
Then he cut a piece of trim the width of the drawer & routed a section of the top to fit into the routed space from above. This would give the dividers some stability. It’s kind of hard to explain, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking:
The picture above shows these two pieces put together.
And here they are in the drawer. This gave us the two vertical storage bins & divided the silverware storage in half.
Next, Mark cut some trim pieces to sit between the spacers.
Here it is after all the pieces are put together.
After labeling everything,
I loaded it with silverware!
I love how everything fits so well in these drawers now! Thank goodness Mark was able to make these for me, because the box in the third “before” picture contained more silverware that I had totally forgotten about!
I still have a few more tricks up my sleeve for this space! I hope you’ll stick around for the full kitchen organization overhaul!
