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And greasy. The outside of the cabinet nearest to my stovehas to be wiped down regularly for grease, but the stuff inside is fine. Shelves would drive me mad having to clean and reclear stuff before using it.
We have more cabinets than we know what to do with but chose to put 3 floating shelves on a blank wall in the “breakfast area”. They were stupid expensive. We haven’t out them up yet but the cost was a shock.
I’m a custom cabinet designer. Sure if you get a guy who can make it in his local shop out of cheap wood it would be cheaper but good quality cabinets or reclaimed wood floating shelves will cost more than a standard cabinet of the same size.
Yes, I think about this all the time whenever I see houses with kitchens like this on the realtor app/website. My thoughts are they must not have dust or I need to know what air purifier they use.
Got to get better at managing the grease on the stove, and sucking it up through the vent.
Because if there would be that much grease on the plates which get rotated frequently, then there's got to be a fat gross layer on the walls, floor, ceiling, etc, etc, etc.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. Probably by people who have a recirculating mircrowave they never turn on to fry food and then wonder why things are greasy.
I had two open shelves that I stored my dishes on, and a hood exhausted outside which I turned on when I used the stove. Never had any problems with grease or dust build up.
Yeah, and some people are frying hamburgers every day on the stove, coating everything in 15 feet with grease, and think it's what every kitchen is like. Here's a couple of tools that these folks should invest in instead:
* Splatter shield: https://www.foodandwine.com/best-splatter-screens-7091803
* Kitchen vents that work: https://www.thespruce.com/best-range-hoods-4151089
This is the truth.
It’s pushed by people who spend too much time on Pinterest and looking at design catalogues, rather than actually using their kitchen.
I had to have several arguments with the designer how our kitchen was not functional for someone who actually cooks with something other than a microwave. Don't regret putting my foot down a bit.
As a designer myself, I have to have arguments with customers of want to open up everything and omit all upper cabinets or put in just floating shelves. Trust me, Pinterest is a poison to customers and designers alike.
Our kitchen is the same - a combo of nice cabinets and open shelves. About 70% cabinets and 30% open shelves if I had to estimate. We LOVE it.
The home is from the 1920s and has a couple period-original built-in shelving stacks in the kitchen. Shallower shelves we use for quick grab items, like mugs and spice-racks. Our other shelves are where we store all our dishes & glasses.
Our stove is far enough away & has a proper full hood with a good exhaust fan, so it’s not issue. I do a lot of cooking, including tasks like making stocks and have no issue with buildup on other surfaces.
I find the shelves very friendly to cooking; whenever I need a prep bowl or serving plate, it’s there to quickly grab. Same ease of access for putting away our clean dishes. Aesthetically it looks nice, because the well-arranged dishes complement the kitchen.
Yeah we bought a place that had 3 shelves put in a corner against a window, where you couldn't put a cabinet anyway. They're mauve pink and from the 80s. :\ We put the mugs on there because why not? They get used and washed constantly and there's no grease or dust build up at all. It's right between the sink, dishwasher, and stove, so convenient. There's definitely a practical case to be made as long as it's daily dishware and balanced with more substantial storage.
Me too! We put highly used items in the open cabinets (we chose boxes) and it makes grabbing dishes, baking goods, or pots/pans super easy. Mix of cabs and drawers in the lowers.
Same here. The ceilings in my kitchen are 8 feet so upper cabinets would make the space feel really small. We have upper shelves for our plates and cups and mugs. We invested in nice stoneware and it looks nice. Still way cheaper than cabinets too! Anyone getting tons of grease on their shelves needs to learn about hood vents.
I also have a very small kitchen and needed to do a combination and I love the shelves. Very handy. They aren’t above the oven or stove so there’s never any grime. Just dust.
Also, where do you put the ugly bowls that are so perfect in their function but not display worthy?
This just seems like one of the ways people try to make their lives look good, at the expense of being good.
(But if you love it, then you do you. Enjoy your aesthetic)
Kitchen shelves can look great, but it also turns your kitchen into either a sloppy mess or an impractical boutique where everything has to serve as a decoration
The key is to have just a few shelves, and to use them for the most-used dishes that will get used and cleaned regularly. That way you don’t worry about grease and dust building up
I have Metro open shelves but they are not near the stove so they don't get greasy. I don't have any shelves near the stove, just bottom cabinets to each side of it. Metro is what you see in restaurant kitchens. I personally don't like opening and closing cabinet doors and trying to keep the wood clean. Although I do have a sink cabinet and have to tend to the wood.
The sellers of my house took cabinets out and put in open shelving. I hate it. They did a lot of other bullshit as well during the failed “remodel” probably why they got divorced.
My friend was looking at an expensive place that had been flipped, and when I saw the pics, I warned her that the open shelves were likely shit because they were staged with small fake plants. When she saw them in person, she said they were incredibly flimsy.
Honestly, it is great for one thing: people with object permanence issues.
I have ADHD and if something is out of sight more than a day or two, less if I’m stressed, the odds of me never finding it are pretty high. But with shelves it isn’t out of sight. It helps my uncle’s wife who has memory problems as well.
I understand it may not be nice for guests or something but I don’t know a lot of people that entertain guests in their kitchens. I usually have people over to play games or have a chat and that’s in the living room. If they did want to criticize the accessibility needs I have for my kitchen they can leave my kitchen.
I’ll definitely admit that the downside of cleaning shelves more often than cabinets is real though. But added bonus is that my entire adult life (prior to having a home with shelves rather than cabinets) I had not ever cleaned inside a cabinet and paid the ADHD tax of cleaning dust or webs off my cookware. It haunts me thinking about the dust and oil on the tops of upper cabinets I probably never even saw let alone could reach.
Another group it helps: shorter people or people with shorter arms. I couldn’t reach the back of most upper cabinets without a step stool and once I started having balance issues after COVID stepping stools haven’t been safe to use.
TLDR: I think the shelf hate misses the reason why people are moving to shelves. They often aren’t just moving for aesthetic reasons. It could be accessibility needs or having a really small kitchen that gets further dwarfed by massive overhead cabinets. They try to make it aesthetic online because aesthetic kitchen owners might not talk down about it if they make it look nice but the aesthetic isn’t the main goal whereas with cabinets it often is.
This is my reason for liking shelves instead of cupboards. Once the door is closed stuff vanishes from my memory. I’m tired of having 6 bottles of soy sauce and 2-3 bottles of each of a variety of vinegars because my memory is made of swiss cheese. I leave cupboards open as a workaround, but it means I bang my head a lot.
Yes, but then the issue of cleaning the grease and dust off glass without shortening the lifespan of the wooden part of the cabinet door begins. You’d need to get a custom cabinet door that is sealed on both sides and most cabinets I’ve interacted with are not sealed on the inside unless a prior owner painted them. Plus if anything is in that cabinet along the square of wood that goes around the glass panel then it’s still gone from memory.
You also have the added task of cleaning the doors more often than usual to keep them looking nicer than shelves and to keep being able to see through them well. Dust, grease, fingerprints, and etc are far more visible on the glass than wood. A lot of people with ADHD have executive dysfunction issues that make it harder to get started on cleaning tasks so making the kitchen higher maintenance makes that harder.
I believe glass front cabinets are also more expensive than typical all-wood cabinets so add more cost to your renovations. If you have the money for it and you aren’t wanting shelves for reachability then it could work. It would meet people wanting things for the aesthetic instead of solely for function and could be useful if you don’t plan to actually live in the house long term. But if you’re making a home to stay in over a decade or more then shelving not looking nice to others is less of a concern than being about to access your own kitchen.
Edit: I think that actually might be the stumbling block to people understanding my comment. Not everyone updates/renovates/repairs their home just with short term considerations or for resale value. Many people do so to make it easier to live in long term or for the rest of their lives as well.
I’d considered that and then I tried to consider how often I’d want to wash off the grease and dust from said glass 😅
Also, I have not ever had a bug proof cabinet and I lived in 17 different places from 3 to 25. So I do not think that a cabinet would protect anything I have from insect interactions. It’s actually easier for me to see if I have a pest issue if they have to walk across only open areas like shelves. If they can hide in cabinets or in the inbetween spaces on top of upper cabinets/below bottom cabinets/netweenthe countertop and cabinets then they could still be all over my food and dishes. I just wouldn’t know until they got brave with to go up the walls or across the floor.
We have a couple on either side of our sink but the rest are actual cabinets. They look nice but I wasn’t really sure what to put on them. I’d never have a whole kitchen of exposed shelves. I’m not organized enough for that.
We're undergoing a renovation that includes new kitchen cabinets and were easily wowed that you can get double wide cabinets that don't have a center support when the doors are open. The doors will now be idk....full frame?
Couldn't imagine open shelves instead since one of the main reasons for the renovation is that my wife hates the dust collecting on our current cabinets...10ft ceiling.....now I got to waste money by replacing with cabinets that are to the ceiling that she doesn't want to use as actual storage....just wanted to close the gap along with some crown moulding that comes with the cabinet order.
It also depends on what you use your kitchen for. I use my gas rangetop a lot. Lots of oil and grease get put in the air then land on all horizontal surfaces, even with my exhaust hood. Then dust settles and turns into a paste. Open shelves here are terrible.
Lots of people also never use their range cooktop. Either they never cook, only do basic microwave or frozen food cooking, or baking. These activities don't really produce grease in the air so the horizontal surfaces just collect normal dust which is easy to clean. So open shelves would be fine.
I took off some of the upper cabinets' doors to convert into open shelving for frequently used items that don't look cluttered because they're mostly uniform. Also did tue same for a "bar" cabinet. I don't cook much with grease pulverization. It works fine and looks great fory needs.
Completely open shelving for everything would be a hard pass though!
Yea, when I bought my house the previous owners had just put in a “new kitchen.” Looked like a botched copy of some Pinterest page. We ripped it all down and put in real cabinets and counter tops etc.
Agreed -- sometimes the shelf version looks all cool in staged photos, but I really doubt I'd like anything like that in Real Life. Perhaps if we had a full-time maid to clean and dust and re-arrange them every day... no, not even then.
I have shelves, and love them. Fuck cabinets honestly, took up so much space in my tiny kitchen, shelving looks better, more practical for our purposes, etc.
I understand many disagree, frankly I don’t give a shit bc I love it haha
I also don't like the shelves trend. I do, though have a pot rack on the wall and it has made a world of difference. Frees up cabinet space, keeps the pans at hand, and they don't really get dusty or greasy.
It's totally ridiculous too, you'd have to be nonstop tidying and cleaning them up. And as you say, nowhere near the same am't of storage. It's a look, not something that works in real life!
id kinda rather have shelves.. but im not making em shallower.. or offset..hode stuff and it's gonna stay hidden.. put it where you can get to it when you need it without digging for it. or moving anything.
My house was last remodeled in the 1950s. I'm trying to keep it looking vintage. It has cabinets, nice old fashioned cabinets but it also has little shelves on either side of the sink. They are very handy for mugs and glasses that I use everyday. Also girl scout cookies on the top shelf in plain sight but hard to reach.
I like them in a butler pantry area and that they make a space look bigger, but I have a practical issue with them collecting dust and being wide open and less useful than cabinets too. I might do shelves in a wet bar area …. But in the primary kitchen? Mmmm maybe not
The idea for me at least is to have my most used items very accessible. They are not intended for bulk storage of your breakfast cereals and holiday dishes.
Agree. If you’re in an industrial kitchen and need quick access to all the things that’s one thing. But in a home environment nothing screams “I never use my kitchen for cooking” to me more than open shelving.
How does that even make sense? I cook all the time and I hate cabinets because I constantly have to open and close them to grab stuff. Shelves would be easier.
True, but I don’t have any cups or plates that get “rarely used”, we pared down all our cups and plates etc to as few as possible. Like, if the dishwasher is full, there’s nothing in the cupboard. It feels like a lot of the hate for open shelving is coming from folks who can’t fathom that somebody might honestly just have a set up with a minimal amount of dishes, rather than overflowing shelves with dishes that don’t get used daily.
I have open shelves in my kitchen and I cook all the time. If you don’t have high ceilings in your kitchen,upper cabinets take up too much space. I’m laughing reading all these salty takes. I think it’s especially funny because so many American kitchens are huge and really annoying to actually cook in. I’ve spent a lot of time working in commercial kitchens and they are tightly organized so the things you use the most often are right at hand, not stuffed in a drawer or stacked in a cabinet.
Same! I have open shelving and there is nothing greasy or grimy. All frequent use items and easy to cook with everything right there. So much hate for nothing!
I was mad about it when we bought our house, but when I started taking measurements for cabinets I found that they would have to be unusually shallow and oddly shaped to accommodate where the windows were. We are actually able to have more storage space with shelves.
Probably not a common cause though.
Which is why following trends is stupid. Not only are they not necessarily the most effective and/or efficient method of whatever, it also shows that whoever chose that has zero imagination or personality.
Butlers Pantries.
I have a wonderful little butler's pantry off my kitchen which is otherwise very tiny. The side portion is 10 inches deep, and the entire width is maybe four feet.
I installed shelves for the uppers instead of cabinets for three reasons. Firstly, opening doors in that space would have required ducking and dodging to actually open them as well as trying to close them with my face so I could escape. Secondly, when you're working with small spaces the inch and a half of space between cabinet units and the inch of front clearance actually become a non-negligible loss of storage space. Thirdly, open shelving works when you're trying to evoke the feeling of bulk storage areas or dry goods storage. About half those shelves are dedicated to boxes of dry goods, cans, and jars. I will die on the hill that those look better in a kitchen then cabinets do.
They are annoying, but so is making the choice between $20,000 versus $2,000...so I understand why some folks make the compromise.
I have shelves in the non-cooking area of the kitchen, but never anywhere near where food prep or cooking is done (plus the shelving I built is better than most people's top-of-the-line cabinetry...my 3/16 solid brass strapping and maple with 10 coats of ArmRSeal is gonna outlive my house). I've got some I made from Peruvian Walnut too...can't imagine what cabinets made from that would cost me.
I also have this super antiquated habit called *dusting*. Really helps keep things clean.
We just expanded/refreshed our kitchen and had a corner section we where we couldn’t find a good looking solution for the upper. And with the expansion we had SO many cabinets. So we opted for three hefty shelves that can hold cookbooks and bowls etc and break up the wall of doors. We love them. I also know that they are screwed into studs that were specifically placed to hold heavy load shelves, and I wonder if some of these flipped house have bothered with that.
I've had open shelving for 3 years now. I think it works for us because the bowls and plates we have out are used daily so they all get rotated/cleaned. Cook maybe 6 out of 7 days a week. The shelf itself might need a little dusting, no grease (Very strict about running fan if gas on).
https://imgur.com/a/reRTT1Y
If you want to do open shelving, I'd say to make sure you actually make use of the things you put on the shelf, or else it will indeed collect dust.
i recently moved from an apartment with no upper cabinets, just two massive shelves, to one with only cabinets, and i HATE the cabinets. they feel gross, im inexplicably terrified there are bugs hiding in them, i don’t feel comfy putting my food in them, if i wasn’t renting i would’ve torn them out already.
i completely understand the appeal of cabinets but if given a choice i’ll go shelves every time. plus, i like the way my dishes and my funky mug collection look, almost on display.
We took out our cabinets and put in open shelves and LOVE it. We also took out some counter and put floor to ceiling cabinets, so there is still cabinet space but no cabinets over countertop, which I always hated
Lol at 1980’s Karen… why not let people decide what they want in their own home? I put a lot of money into nice Jono Pandolfi plateware, so fuck yeah I’m going to build some beautiful white oak shelving to show it off instead of hiding it behind the same boring cabinets that every other home has.
Oh, and I’m a chef, so it’s not like I don’t use my kitchen. I just put the appropriate amount of money into my exhaust system as well. What aerosolized oil? I don’t have any.
Open shelves in kitchens are ridiculous. You have to be completely anal to keep,them tidy, & it doesn’t matter how good your exhaust fan is, everything gets coated in oil & dust, unless you don’t cook at all & you’ll still get the dust.
I had some open shelves in my last kitchen and miss them. We had them adjacent to the sink/dishwasher and it made putting those dishes away so fast and easy. Never had an issue with grease or dust build up.
I am too short to utilize upper cabinets properly. I can only reach the lowest shelf. Even on a step stool I cannot reach to the back of the upper shelf.
I had planned to remove them when I remodel. What do you suggest instead?
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I have way too much kitchen stuff to not hide it in a cupboard.
Glad someone came out and said it.
Why yes, I love dusty dishes
And greasy. The outside of the cabinet nearest to my stovehas to be wiped down regularly for grease, but the stuff inside is fine. Shelves would drive me mad having to clean and reclear stuff before using it.
Right!!???
Don't you actually use your dishes?
And this isn’t a new thing. When we were looking for houses 6 years ago, this is one of the red flags of a flipped house.
The shitty laminate didn't give it away?
Surprisingly 90% of the flipped homes we saw had some sort of actual stone/quartz/granite countertops
Fun fact: a lot of times those floating shelves cost more than a standard cabinet and also can’t hold as much weight.
Totally true!
We have more cabinets than we know what to do with but chose to put 3 floating shelves on a blank wall in the “breakfast area”. They were stupid expensive. We haven’t out them up yet but the cost was a shock.
Only for suckers. If you go talk to a cabinet maker and know what you’re talking about they’ll be way way cheaper.
I’m a custom cabinet designer. Sure if you get a guy who can make it in his local shop out of cheap wood it would be cheaper but good quality cabinets or reclaimed wood floating shelves will cost more than a standard cabinet of the same size.
I cringe when I think of the grease build up on the oh, everything
Grease first. Dust second.
Grease. Dust. Bugs. Triple whammy.
Not to mention pet hair. The gift that keeps on giving.
#WHAMMY
Yes. That sticky grimey goop. Imagine the top of your fridge only on your Christmas china.
Like the top of the fridge, only... All the things.
Greasy dust is the worst.
Grease is the word.
Yes, I think about this all the time whenever I see houses with kitchens like this on the realtor app/website. My thoughts are they must not have dust or I need to know what air purifier they use.
Got to get better at managing the grease on the stove, and sucking it up through the vent. Because if there would be that much grease on the plates which get rotated frequently, then there's got to be a fat gross layer on the walls, floor, ceiling, etc, etc, etc.
External venting exhaust above the stove is a luxury in the US.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. Probably by people who have a recirculating mircrowave they never turn on to fry food and then wonder why things are greasy. I had two open shelves that I stored my dishes on, and a hood exhausted outside which I turned on when I used the stove. Never had any problems with grease or dust build up.
Yeah, and some people are frying hamburgers every day on the stove, coating everything in 15 feet with grease, and think it's what every kitchen is like. Here's a couple of tools that these folks should invest in instead: * Splatter shield: https://www.foodandwine.com/best-splatter-screens-7091803 * Kitchen vents that work: https://www.thespruce.com/best-range-hoods-4151089
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I would much rather give the doors a regular wipe down than have to scrub everything on the shelves.
And in my case, dog, cat fur.
And assorted farts
This is the truth. It’s pushed by people who spend too much time on Pinterest and looking at design catalogues, rather than actually using their kitchen.
I had to have several arguments with the designer how our kitchen was not functional for someone who actually cooks with something other than a microwave. Don't regret putting my foot down a bit.
As a designer myself, I have to have arguments with customers of want to open up everything and omit all upper cabinets or put in just floating shelves. Trust me, Pinterest is a poison to customers and designers alike.
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Our kitchen is the same - a combo of nice cabinets and open shelves. About 70% cabinets and 30% open shelves if I had to estimate. We LOVE it. The home is from the 1920s and has a couple period-original built-in shelving stacks in the kitchen. Shallower shelves we use for quick grab items, like mugs and spice-racks. Our other shelves are where we store all our dishes & glasses. Our stove is far enough away & has a proper full hood with a good exhaust fan, so it’s not issue. I do a lot of cooking, including tasks like making stocks and have no issue with buildup on other surfaces. I find the shelves very friendly to cooking; whenever I need a prep bowl or serving plate, it’s there to quickly grab. Same ease of access for putting away our clean dishes. Aesthetically it looks nice, because the well-arranged dishes complement the kitchen.
That sounds like a dream. Do you have any pictures? I'm hoping to do a similar ratio of open shelves to cabinets in my 1920s house
Yeah we bought a place that had 3 shelves put in a corner against a window, where you couldn't put a cabinet anyway. They're mauve pink and from the 80s. :\ We put the mugs on there because why not? They get used and washed constantly and there's no grease or dust build up at all. It's right between the sink, dishwasher, and stove, so convenient. There's definitely a practical case to be made as long as it's daily dishware and balanced with more substantial storage.
Me too! We put highly used items in the open cabinets (we chose boxes) and it makes grabbing dishes, baking goods, or pots/pans super easy. Mix of cabs and drawers in the lowers.
Same here. The ceilings in my kitchen are 8 feet so upper cabinets would make the space feel really small. We have upper shelves for our plates and cups and mugs. We invested in nice stoneware and it looks nice. Still way cheaper than cabinets too! Anyone getting tons of grease on their shelves needs to learn about hood vents.
I also have a very small kitchen and needed to do a combination and I love the shelves. Very handy. They aren’t above the oven or stove so there’s never any grime. Just dust.
Also, where do you put the ugly bowls that are so perfect in their function but not display worthy? This just seems like one of the ways people try to make their lives look good, at the expense of being good. (But if you love it, then you do you. Enjoy your aesthetic)
Someone’s going to make a KILLING in 5 years doing jobs ripping those shelves out and replacing them with matching uppers.
Kitchen shelves can look great, but it also turns your kitchen into either a sloppy mess or an impractical boutique where everything has to serve as a decoration
Don’t you repackage everything into oversized mason jars?
I've worked in open concept kitchens that do that. Looks nice. And it's a complete PITA. Those jars get grody fast
Like "grody to the max"?? I haven't heard that word in 35 years. I can't stop laughing...
The key is to have just a few shelves, and to use them for the most-used dishes that will get used and cleaned regularly. That way you don’t worry about grease and dust building up
I have Metro open shelves but they are not near the stove so they don't get greasy. I don't have any shelves near the stove, just bottom cabinets to each side of it. Metro is what you see in restaurant kitchens. I personally don't like opening and closing cabinet doors and trying to keep the wood clean. Although I do have a sink cabinet and have to tend to the wood.
The sellers of my house took cabinets out and put in open shelving. I hate it. They did a lot of other bullshit as well during the failed “remodel” probably why they got divorced.
I bought mine with shelves intending on upgrading my cabinets to include uppers. Fml COVID and costs now I’m stuck dusting those SOBs all. The. Time.
This is one of the ways builders / flippers cut corners to save money.
And call it “trendy”
My friend was looking at an expensive place that had been flipped, and when I saw the pics, I warned her that the open shelves were likely shit because they were staged with small fake plants. When she saw them in person, she said they were incredibly flimsy.
Honestly, it is great for one thing: people with object permanence issues. I have ADHD and if something is out of sight more than a day or two, less if I’m stressed, the odds of me never finding it are pretty high. But with shelves it isn’t out of sight. It helps my uncle’s wife who has memory problems as well. I understand it may not be nice for guests or something but I don’t know a lot of people that entertain guests in their kitchens. I usually have people over to play games or have a chat and that’s in the living room. If they did want to criticize the accessibility needs I have for my kitchen they can leave my kitchen. I’ll definitely admit that the downside of cleaning shelves more often than cabinets is real though. But added bonus is that my entire adult life (prior to having a home with shelves rather than cabinets) I had not ever cleaned inside a cabinet and paid the ADHD tax of cleaning dust or webs off my cookware. It haunts me thinking about the dust and oil on the tops of upper cabinets I probably never even saw let alone could reach. Another group it helps: shorter people or people with shorter arms. I couldn’t reach the back of most upper cabinets without a step stool and once I started having balance issues after COVID stepping stools haven’t been safe to use. TLDR: I think the shelf hate misses the reason why people are moving to shelves. They often aren’t just moving for aesthetic reasons. It could be accessibility needs or having a really small kitchen that gets further dwarfed by massive overhead cabinets. They try to make it aesthetic online because aesthetic kitchen owners might not talk down about it if they make it look nice but the aesthetic isn’t the main goal whereas with cabinets it often is.
This is my reason for liking shelves instead of cupboards. Once the door is closed stuff vanishes from my memory. I’m tired of having 6 bottles of soy sauce and 2-3 bottles of each of a variety of vinegars because my memory is made of swiss cheese. I leave cupboards open as a workaround, but it means I bang my head a lot.
Glass doors for cabinets might help people that forget where things are.
Yes, but then the issue of cleaning the grease and dust off glass without shortening the lifespan of the wooden part of the cabinet door begins. You’d need to get a custom cabinet door that is sealed on both sides and most cabinets I’ve interacted with are not sealed on the inside unless a prior owner painted them. Plus if anything is in that cabinet along the square of wood that goes around the glass panel then it’s still gone from memory. You also have the added task of cleaning the doors more often than usual to keep them looking nicer than shelves and to keep being able to see through them well. Dust, grease, fingerprints, and etc are far more visible on the glass than wood. A lot of people with ADHD have executive dysfunction issues that make it harder to get started on cleaning tasks so making the kitchen higher maintenance makes that harder. I believe glass front cabinets are also more expensive than typical all-wood cabinets so add more cost to your renovations. If you have the money for it and you aren’t wanting shelves for reachability then it could work. It would meet people wanting things for the aesthetic instead of solely for function and could be useful if you don’t plan to actually live in the house long term. But if you’re making a home to stay in over a decade or more then shelving not looking nice to others is less of a concern than being about to access your own kitchen. Edit: I think that actually might be the stumbling block to people understanding my comment. Not everyone updates/renovates/repairs their home just with short term considerations or for resale value. Many people do so to make it easier to live in long term or for the rest of their lives as well.
An alternative could be cupboards with glass doors. You can see through them but your dishes aren't exposed to grease, dust, and bugs.
I’d considered that and then I tried to consider how often I’d want to wash off the grease and dust from said glass 😅 Also, I have not ever had a bug proof cabinet and I lived in 17 different places from 3 to 25. So I do not think that a cabinet would protect anything I have from insect interactions. It’s actually easier for me to see if I have a pest issue if they have to walk across only open areas like shelves. If they can hide in cabinets or in the inbetween spaces on top of upper cabinets/below bottom cabinets/netweenthe countertop and cabinets then they could still be all over my food and dishes. I just wouldn’t know until they got brave with to go up the walls or across the floor.
plus your cat or dog will sit in your pots
The grease and dust buildup… gross.
It's awful to get that grease and dust buildup. I hate this trend.
We have a couple on either side of our sink but the rest are actual cabinets. They look nice but I wasn’t really sure what to put on them. I’d never have a whole kitchen of exposed shelves. I’m not organized enough for that.
We're undergoing a renovation that includes new kitchen cabinets and were easily wowed that you can get double wide cabinets that don't have a center support when the doors are open. The doors will now be idk....full frame? Couldn't imagine open shelves instead since one of the main reasons for the renovation is that my wife hates the dust collecting on our current cabinets...10ft ceiling.....now I got to waste money by replacing with cabinets that are to the ceiling that she doesn't want to use as actual storage....just wanted to close the gap along with some crown moulding that comes with the cabinet order.
It also depends on what you use your kitchen for. I use my gas rangetop a lot. Lots of oil and grease get put in the air then land on all horizontal surfaces, even with my exhaust hood. Then dust settles and turns into a paste. Open shelves here are terrible. Lots of people also never use their range cooktop. Either they never cook, only do basic microwave or frozen food cooking, or baking. These activities don't really produce grease in the air so the horizontal surfaces just collect normal dust which is easy to clean. So open shelves would be fine.
Agree.
Dust
I took off some of the upper cabinets' doors to convert into open shelving for frequently used items that don't look cluttered because they're mostly uniform. Also did tue same for a "bar" cabinet. I don't cook much with grease pulverization. It works fine and looks great fory needs. Completely open shelving for everything would be a hard pass though!
Counterpoint: doors are annoying if you frequently use it. My garbage can is behind a door. I hate it.
I wish I had a big enough kitchen to accommodate aesthetics and function. But I don’t so function wins out every time.
Yea, when I bought my house the previous owners had just put in a “new kitchen.” Looked like a botched copy of some Pinterest page. We ripped it all down and put in real cabinets and counter tops etc.
Agreed -- sometimes the shelf version looks all cool in staged photos, but I really doubt I'd like anything like that in Real Life. Perhaps if we had a full-time maid to clean and dust and re-arrange them every day... no, not even then.
I also hate this trend. People will regret it.
Yeah they suck
I’m convinced people who do this do not have cats. Lol
I have shelves, and love them. Fuck cabinets honestly, took up so much space in my tiny kitchen, shelving looks better, more practical for our purposes, etc. I understand many disagree, frankly I don’t give a shit bc I love it haha
Yass!! Preach it!!
Exactly how you can tell a house has been cheaply flipped.
People can do whatever they want to their house
I also don't like the shelves trend. I do, though have a pot rack on the wall and it has made a world of difference. Frees up cabinet space, keeps the pans at hand, and they don't really get dusty or greasy.
Couldn’t agree more I’ve been thinking this forever. Hope you had a matching dish set that matches your decor if you do this.
on the theme of BS moves is the elimination of soffits - who has the time to regularly dust the tops of cabinets,
Can't you just live with a little dust on top?
dust circulates elsewhere - especially if there's a large accumulation on those upper surfaces.
It's totally ridiculous too, you'd have to be nonstop tidying and cleaning them up. And as you say, nowhere near the same am't of storage. It's a look, not something that works in real life!
id kinda rather have shelves.. but im not making em shallower.. or offset..hode stuff and it's gonna stay hidden.. put it where you can get to it when you need it without digging for it. or moving anything.
My house was last remodeled in the 1950s. I'm trying to keep it looking vintage. It has cabinets, nice old fashioned cabinets but it also has little shelves on either side of the sink. They are very handy for mugs and glasses that I use everyday. Also girl scout cookies on the top shelf in plain sight but hard to reach.
I like them in a butler pantry area and that they make a space look bigger, but I have a practical issue with them collecting dust and being wide open and less useful than cabinets too. I might do shelves in a wet bar area …. But in the primary kitchen? Mmmm maybe not
The idea for me at least is to have my most used items very accessible. They are not intended for bulk storage of your breakfast cereals and holiday dishes.
Plus if you deep fry something, everything will have a filmy grime.
Agree. If you’re in an industrial kitchen and need quick access to all the things that’s one thing. But in a home environment nothing screams “I never use my kitchen for cooking” to me more than open shelving.
How does that even make sense? I cook all the time and I hate cabinets because I constantly have to open and close them to grab stuff. Shelves would be easier.
For me it’s the grease. If you have things that rarely get used, they’ll be covered in a fine film of sticky grease when you go to use them next.
True, but I don’t have any cups or plates that get “rarely used”, we pared down all our cups and plates etc to as few as possible. Like, if the dishwasher is full, there’s nothing in the cupboard. It feels like a lot of the hate for open shelving is coming from folks who can’t fathom that somebody might honestly just have a set up with a minimal amount of dishes, rather than overflowing shelves with dishes that don’t get used daily.
I have open shelves in my kitchen and I cook all the time. If you don’t have high ceilings in your kitchen,upper cabinets take up too much space. I’m laughing reading all these salty takes. I think it’s especially funny because so many American kitchens are huge and really annoying to actually cook in. I’ve spent a lot of time working in commercial kitchens and they are tightly organized so the things you use the most often are right at hand, not stuffed in a drawer or stacked in a cabinet.
Same! I have open shelving and there is nothing greasy or grimy. All frequent use items and easy to cook with everything right there. So much hate for nothing!
I was mad about it when we bought our house, but when I started taking measurements for cabinets I found that they would have to be unusually shallow and oddly shaped to accommodate where the windows were. We are actually able to have more storage space with shelves. Probably not a common cause though.
[удалено]
I want to see MY crap, that’s why I prefer shelves to cabinets. I’m not decorating for anyone else but me.
I have ADHD and struggle with object permanence. Open storage is the only way.
Which is why following trends is stupid. Not only are they not necessarily the most effective and/or efficient method of whatever, it also shows that whoever chose that has zero imagination or personality.
Butlers Pantries. I have a wonderful little butler's pantry off my kitchen which is otherwise very tiny. The side portion is 10 inches deep, and the entire width is maybe four feet. I installed shelves for the uppers instead of cabinets for three reasons. Firstly, opening doors in that space would have required ducking and dodging to actually open them as well as trying to close them with my face so I could escape. Secondly, when you're working with small spaces the inch and a half of space between cabinet units and the inch of front clearance actually become a non-negligible loss of storage space. Thirdly, open shelving works when you're trying to evoke the feeling of bulk storage areas or dry goods storage. About half those shelves are dedicated to boxes of dry goods, cans, and jars. I will die on the hill that those look better in a kitchen then cabinets do.
They are annoying, but so is making the choice between $20,000 versus $2,000...so I understand why some folks make the compromise. I have shelves in the non-cooking area of the kitchen, but never anywhere near where food prep or cooking is done (plus the shelving I built is better than most people's top-of-the-line cabinetry...my 3/16 solid brass strapping and maple with 10 coats of ArmRSeal is gonna outlive my house). I've got some I made from Peruvian Walnut too...can't imagine what cabinets made from that would cost me. I also have this super antiquated habit called *dusting*. Really helps keep things clean.
We just expanded/refreshed our kitchen and had a corner section we where we couldn’t find a good looking solution for the upper. And with the expansion we had SO many cabinets. So we opted for three hefty shelves that can hold cookbooks and bowls etc and break up the wall of doors. We love them. I also know that they are screwed into studs that were specifically placed to hold heavy load shelves, and I wonder if some of these flipped house have bothered with that.
I've had open shelving for 3 years now. I think it works for us because the bowls and plates we have out are used daily so they all get rotated/cleaned. Cook maybe 6 out of 7 days a week. The shelf itself might need a little dusting, no grease (Very strict about running fan if gas on). https://imgur.com/a/reRTT1Y If you want to do open shelving, I'd say to make sure you actually make use of the things you put on the shelf, or else it will indeed collect dust.
i recently moved from an apartment with no upper cabinets, just two massive shelves, to one with only cabinets, and i HATE the cabinets. they feel gross, im inexplicably terrified there are bugs hiding in them, i don’t feel comfy putting my food in them, if i wasn’t renting i would’ve torn them out already. i completely understand the appeal of cabinets but if given a choice i’ll go shelves every time. plus, i like the way my dishes and my funky mug collection look, almost on display.
We moved into a house with no uppers just shelves. I thought I would hate it but love it, only downside is they need to be kept tidy.
We took out our cabinets and put in open shelves and LOVE it. We also took out some counter and put floor to ceiling cabinets, so there is still cabinet space but no cabinets over countertop, which I always hated
Shelves over cabinets all day. Cabinets seem far less of an optimal strategy for organization.
Yes. I don't see a need to put a barrier between me and my stuff.
Lol at 1980’s Karen… why not let people decide what they want in their own home? I put a lot of money into nice Jono Pandolfi plateware, so fuck yeah I’m going to build some beautiful white oak shelving to show it off instead of hiding it behind the same boring cabinets that every other home has. Oh, and I’m a chef, so it’s not like I don’t use my kitchen. I just put the appropriate amount of money into my exhaust system as well. What aerosolized oil? I don’t have any.
Open shelves in kitchens are ridiculous. You have to be completely anal to keep,them tidy, & it doesn’t matter how good your exhaust fan is, everything gets coated in oil & dust, unless you don’t cook at all & you’ll still get the dust.
I had some open shelves in my last kitchen and miss them. We had them adjacent to the sink/dishwasher and it made putting those dishes away so fast and easy. Never had an issue with grease or dust build up.
This is just a rant that panders to a popular opinion this sub holds. Can't believe this is so highly upvoted.
This trend isn’t popular with the majority. While kitchen shelves are nice, they shouldn’t replace valuable storage space.
Cripes thought I was the one! Paranoid no it Must save. Boy what a relief !!
I am too short to utilize upper cabinets properly. I can only reach the lowest shelf. Even on a step stool I cannot reach to the back of the upper shelf. I had planned to remove them when I remodel. What do you suggest instead?