Open kitchen shelving - what’s it really like to live with?

[soupdragon321]

Hi, do and I moved house recently and need to redo kitchen. We had thought long and hard and are now thinking of having open shelves on the wall where the cooker is - there are cabinets below. On the shelves would be our plates, bowls on one side and cups and tea/coffee making stuff in the other side of cooker as that side is nearest sink - we’d be getting a quooker tap. We’re just wondering what it’s really like to live with open shelves rather than just be swayed by lovely pics on Instagram. Any options/ experience would be greatly appreciated!

We have them,
We have big glass jars with all of our dried item, pasta, lentils, flour, oats, cornmeal, legumes, cocoa, coffee beans etc
We have clear square container with cereal, biscuits, crackers, lunchbox snacks and other bits.
We also keep glasses and cups, mugs on the shelves but not plates.
And hooks under the bottom shelf for our pans and utensils.

I love them but dusting is a bit of a pain, the jars can look grubby easily so need cleaning often,
I do think it looks lovely though.

If you like dusting go for it. If you don’t I suggest cupboards.

Absolute pain in the arse.

It looks great in pictures wshen it's carefully curated and styled and tidy but if you actually use your kitchen it's not great.

Even with an excellent extractor hood and wiping down every day things get greasy and dusty. It bothers me when things are in the dishwasher and the shelves look bare but you also have to be careful to avoid clutter.

Next kitchen I'm definitely having all doors.

We are lucky to have a big pantry cupboard for all food pasta etc so the shelves would just be for plates, glasses, cups etc. There will be a couple of cupboards on opposite side of kitchen that will contain the stuff we don’t use on day to day basis. We’re used to having lots of ‘clutter’ around - it’s just us really, so dusting not much of an issue?

When we redid the kitchen I put cupboards all along one wall. Hated our old open shelves - not just dusty but if anywhere near the cooker there’s a slightly sticky film too. Sorry!

MadamNoo, that’s interesting- just the kind of thing we need to hear- the truth of them not just the pretty pictures.

I don't have open shelves, but the wall cupboards next to the cooker / hob always seem to have a thin layer of airborne cooking residue that needs cleaning off on a regular basis. I can't see that shelves would be any different, except that it's not just a cupboard door and side that needs wiping down, it's the shelf plus all the individual items. It seems like it would be a complete faff.

If you want to reach for a plate and find a sticky horrible film on it then go ahead. I learnt from experience, they may look lovely and pretty but they are so impractical. Especially the plates and glasses at the bottom of the pile that may not be used as often, they were gross. So I would end up sticking them through the dishwasher once a week to keep it all clean. This was in an old house, currently we don't have a dishwasher so I would never ever have open shelves.

Also you have to constantly tidy them up if you have a partner who just planks stuff on them to put stuff away. They are very high maintenance and they don't justify the amount of work in my opinion.

*plonks

We had a plate rack and an open shelf underneath and a corner shelving thing. So, partially open. I loved it! Didn’t notice and dust in particular.

*any

Yeah it looks nice when it's tidy.
I wouldn't have them for plates or glasses.

Mine were for spices, tea tins, jars of pasta, rice etc...
(No branded packagings were allowed on my shelves because I don't want my kitchen to look like Tesco express)
I also had bowls and casseroles I rarely used on the very top and it was super dusty and greasy, so each time I wanted to use one, I had to wash it up first. Slightly inconvenient.

Now I have doors everywhere, and just few stuff on display on my worktop (olive oil, salt and pepper mills) and that's the dream for me, super tidy and easy to clean up.

Probably going to add shelves somewhere but for cooking books and culinary herbs in pots.

I have one. Like others say, looks beautiful as we have jars of flour, spices etc.

But they get dirty easily and often seem to get greasy from cooking.

Pretty but no practical

We had them in our last house, and as others have said, everything got dusty and greasy. They look great if all your crockery matches, but ours didn't and it just looks messy if you're not careful.

I love our new house which has cupboards for everything and all our mismatched crockery is hidden away!

I would love them instead of top cupboards, but they're just too much work to keep them looking nice & being clean. My plates, bowls etc are all white, so they look good, but just get a sticky feel to them if we've been cooking or dusty if not and l hate the feeling that you don't know if any flies etc have landed on them.

So cupboards it is. Sadly.

Ours also get a sticky residue even though some distance from hob. Very annoying.

I have open shelves. They hold:

• cookery books in rainbow colour order.
• utensils and equipment that are one of the following:

- - stainless steel - - glass - - black or white plastic (eg spatula) Therefore there's a consistent colour and texture palette so it works even though there's loads on there. My family think I'm a bit mad but it looks great and it's not that big of a deal. I only really buy equipment in those materials anyway so it's fine. The way to avoid the sticky residue on stuff is put things on shelves you use frequently so the residue doesn't build up over time.

I love our open shelves. I would always have them now. We put the things we use regularly on them so we dont seem to end up with too much greasy residue to clean up. I imagine if you dont use the stuff on the shelves much they would get very greasy. I;ve found we;ve got so much less clutter and it makes the kitchen look much bigger. Thankfully we have a pantry as well so we dont need to store food on the shelves. We've got one cupboard above to hide the boiler. Heres a before and after of ours. I expect I could display things a bit better on our shelves but we cook a lot so its a functional kitchen

@happystrummer

I love our open shelves. I would always have them now. We put the things we use regularly on them so we dont seem to end up with too much greasy residue to clean up. I imagine if you dont use the stuff on the shelves much they would get very greasy. I;ve found we;ve got so much less clutter and it makes the kitchen look much bigger. Thankfully we have a pantry as well so we dont need to store food on the shelves. We've got one cupboard above to hide the boiler. Heres a before and after of ours. I expect I could display things a bit better on our shelves but we cook a lot so its a functional kitchen

Lovely kitchen OP.

Personally I wouldn't go for open shelves. It's fine if you use things regularly but for me open shelves are for decorative displays so I'd naturally not use the things on the shelf

I definitely wouldn't have them on the same run as a hob.

We have no shelves (or wall cupboards) but have a 3/4 height fridge which we have some oils and spices etc. It gets pretty disgusting really, and my tolerance for mess is quite high. Everything gets oily even though we have a great extractor fan. Tolerable when you only have a few bits to wipe down, but if all your crockery lived on shelves it would be awful

I love love love my open shelves. I keep all my dry goods in kilner jars on them. We are moving soon and the shelves were always mentioned by viewers and I will be putting some straight up in the new house!

Don't do it.
Everything will get filthy and greasy.

I have one she’ll that we keep a short row of pans on beside the hob. Because they’re used pretty much every time we cook, they don’t gather dirt.
We also have a plate rack but put our everyday crockery on it, so it doesn’t get chance to gather grime.

HOWEVER you can’t cram stuff on in the way you can with overhead cupboards. And they can make kitchen look “bitty” unless you place the shelves carefully (I think that’s why mine look messy but #happystrummer looks lovely!).

I think one or two shelves that are purely for carefully selected, decorative and rarely used items works well.

Lots of open shelves taking the place of cupboards, nope.

How about glass fronted cabinets - we have these holding crockery and glassware and it looks a lot tidier (and stays cleaner) than shelves but seems less bulky than solid cupboards. Or short wall cupboards the same colour as the wall can also look less dominating.

They’ll get really greasy and sticky. (Used to have them)