Maximize Countertop Space In Your Kitchen With A Clever Trick From Martha Stewart

In a small kitchen, it's often hard to find room to chop vegetables or put down grocery bags, let alone carve a Thanksgiving turkey. Martha Stewart once addressed that predicament. "In a small kitchen, countertop space is very limited," she says on her YouTube channel. That's where it helps to be creative. If you look around your kitchen for unused space, think vertical rather than horizontal. Look for unused wall space where you can mount a shelf or two. As Martha Stewart notes, "Adding a shelf takes items off the counter and puts them up here."

The virtue of a shelf is that you can store items that you frequently use without them either disappearing behind cupboard doors or taking up valuable counter space. Smaller items, like salt and pepper shakers, measuring cups, boxes of tea, or favorite coffee mugs, are readily available without having to be pushed aside to make room for that cool matcha machine you got for your birthday. Shelving can also add a decorative touch to an otherwise bland kitchen.

The trick is to make sure that you're not intruding on your workspace when installing a shelf. Consider how much vertical space you have to fill with shelving. You might have limited room between your countertop and any cabinets above it. Martha Stewart installed her shelf 22 inches above the counter – high enough so that items were higher than most people's eye level. This gave her around 6 inches between the shelf and the bottom of the cabinet. Also, consider how you want to organize your open kitchen shelf: The key is to make accessible the things you use frequently without ending up with a cluttered mess.

There are other kitchen cabinet ideas that maximize your storage space. Martha Stewart's cabinets above the shelf went all the way up to the ceiling. If yours don't, take advantage of that extra space above the cabinets by storing infrequently used items. Install a utensil rail above your stove or hang a rack from the ceiling to store pots and pans. Freeing up counter space not only gives you more room for practical tasks like dinner prep, but might even give you room to add style to your kitchen with a mini herb garden or a selection of your favorite cookbooks.