Don't Stash Everyday Plates In Your Kitchen Cabinets. Here's Why

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Storing your everyday plates in kitchen cabinets is a pretty standard move but modern kitchen design has taken huge strides over the years to produce new and better ways to stash daily use items. In fact, instead of stacking your plates in an upper cabinet, it's becoming more common to place dinnerware in deep drawers that have been designed with convenience in mind.

While piling your plates up in a cupboard is perfectly acceptable, it does make it harder to grab them when you're using them several times in the same day. Placing them in a drawer so they're at waist-level means you can pull them out easily without stretching up to reach higher shelves. Plus, there's less risk of them cracking or smashing as you get them down. Keeping your dinnerware in a lower spot also means the kids can help lay the table and become more independent when grabbing a quick snack. Play your cards right, and they might also empty the dishwasher and place the clean plates in their designated area due to their reachable spot. All this is to say that a kitchen that centers ergonomic design makes for a more effective cooking space that's easier to manage and maintain. And it makes better sense to place daily dishes in easy-access areas and store lesser-used items in the cabinets instead. That way you can use the free cabinet space to store fancy dinnerware that only comes out for special occasions.

If you have deep or wide drawers, you might find that your plates move around or clatter together when you open and close them. The solution is to place drawer inserts inside that you can move around like pegboards to create circumscribed areas for the diameter of each dinner plate or bowl. You can also purchase plate holders for kitchen drawers from Amazon that can be adjusted at the bottom to accommodate different-sized pieces of crockery. However, there are many cheaper, homemade options too. For instance, a pool noodle is an affordable way to organize your kitchen drawers and shield your plates from clanking against each other. Simply snip your noodle to size with scissors to create a series of drawer dividers or use it as a shock absorber at the very back. 

Other organizational tools that transform deep kitchen drawers are stackable containers. These small bins are perfect for placing beside your plates for storing items like napkin holders or extra cutlery that you might not use every day, but make an appearance at the weekend for special family dinners. Keeping them all at waist-level ensures that older family members with mobility issues can also grab everything they need without assistance.