Kitchen Storage for Small Spaces

As I've mentioned before, I live in a very small apartment. Thankfully, the largest room is the kitchen, and it has a fair amount of wall space (once we got rid of the sofa and moved the bookshelf into the new office) as well as a large closet. We've had to get creative with storage, especially working in a rented space where we can't make structural changes. (I indulge in fantasies of built-in storage shelves.) I'm so pleased with the recent additions of secondhand kitchen furniture!

We already own this rolling cart, which I found on sale a couple of Xmases ago and purchased as a gift to the household (which at that point included a housemate). As the reviews note, it's not as sturdy as it looks, and the assembly took a bit of extra work, but it's a nice storage option just the same.

 The drawer in the cart is our silverware drawer, and we keep foil, plastic cling film, and storage bags inside. The shelves have held a variety of things, but currently they're the best home for the coffee and tea things we only use occasionally. That keeps the top more or less clear to be prep space. The cart sits below our former housemate's repurposed medicine cabinet, which is where we keep our tea stash. (What? We're a living stereotype.)

About a month ago, my sweetie brought home a cabinet from the thrift store where she works. I can't find a good image of a similar product online, but it is taller overall than the cart, and it has one large cabinet with double glass doors, with the space underneath the cabinet open. We stood it over a short white bookshelf we picked up around the same time, and it looks like a cohesive unit at a glance. Behind the doors I keep the Pyrex I don't want to lose if we have a small earthquake, and on the shelves I put our cheerful mixing bowls and baking pans and colanders.

The microwave and toaster oven sit on top of the whole thing. Yeah, it's a little makeshift, but it works well enough.

Today we brought home a third shelving unit! This one also came from the thrift store, and I disassembled it halfway to carry it home. (We had a loan of a coworker's car for the frame, which was bulky.)

Isn't it beautiful?? (Poor camera quality aside.) The wire baskets slide out on casters, and they graduate in size as well. The bottom bin is quite large, and I think I'll keep potatoes and onions and maybe some bulk bags of rice in there.

We'd been considering another kitchen cart or set of wire shelves from Amazon (we have gift cards from the wedding!), but these turned up instead. They're portable, which abides by the rental contract, and they can go with us when we move (possibly into a non-kitchen space). And I have to say, the lower price more than makes up for them being less than perfect! We paid just $28 for all three pieces. Taken at retail prices -- even with a steep Amazon discount -- something similar that covered both uses would have cost us more than a hundred dollars. Settling for these secondhand pieces (which was actually quite convenient) gained us significant savings.

Guess we can look into spending the gift cards on a chest freezer!

I linked to Amazon here, because it's useful and because I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. As the post itself mentions, though, there's value in shopping around for a good price! Make sure you do your homework before making a big purchase.