How many of you moved into your house, threw your pots and pans, silverware, and dishes into whichever cabinet was nearest, and have kept them there since? I have had reorganizing my kitchen on the “to-do” list for almost three years. With a new baby on the way, I started to realize there was just no way we could get another kid’s worth of food/formula/etc into the kitchen without it exploding! So it was time to do SOMETHING…
To better accommodate a growing family, we added a full height pantry along the back wall of the kitchen. In doing this, I was able to move EVERY SINGLE ITEM in the kitchen to a new place. I knew that the kitchen was poorly laid out, but I never knew how much better it could be! The pots, pans, spices, and plastic containers all migrated closer to the stove, the dishes and silverware made their way over by the dishwasher and the glasses by the sink. Who’d of thought an architect would be able to layout their own kitchen with so much sense?
By moving around all of these things, the island cabinets were now cleared out and available for trash (and recycling) cans. I’ve had the trash can in a cabinet, both to keep the kid and the dog out of the trash, and the recycling just left on the counter until I took it out the back door to the bucket. This was NOT ideal – opening the cabinet (using the child lock magnet) and then having to pull out the can to then throw something away has been a pain.
In my first house, I added a pull-out trash bin and have missed it ever since. I decided that two of these, side by side, would be awesome for my needs and went about looking for a kit or pre-fab insert to handle my needs. It would have to fit an 18″ wide cabinet (14.75″ wide opening), hold two cans each, and be able to mount the cabinet door to the front so I would be able to get to the trash in a single movement.
I found that again, my budget was challenged. These kits ranged from $180 up to $300 ($195 as shown) per cabinet and used proprietary trash cans that would require $60 to replace should they ever break, crack, or get too cruddy to keep! That was almost the same cost as the whole full height pantry project. In addition, most of them used a 6 gallon can, which is not enough for a kitchen! This was not going to happen. Good thing I’m an architect, right?
So I designed a simple solution that I was able to implement for under $60 per cabinet, all inclusive. I purchased a stack of lumber, full extension drawer glides, some screws and plain open top rubber maid trash cans. I removed the cabinet door, installed the glides at the bottom of the cabinets, built two drawers out of the wood (1/2″ thick base, 3/4″ sides, back and front), and fastened the old cabinet doors to the front of these new drawers.
Then, simply set the new cans into the drawers and presto – trash pull outs, each one holding two 9-gallon cans! Now I have 18 gallon trash capacity, 9 gallons for paper, and 9 gallons for glass/metal recycling. And if you need less, you can always use one can in a drawer and the rest of the space for extra trash bags, cleaning supplies, etc.
