We have one drawer in our island where we store nearly all of our kitchen prep and cooking utensils. We have a few more spoons and spatulas in a handy container near the stove as well but we use the drawer stuff all the time. So it looked like this 95% of the time.
This is WITH drawer organizers - but they are buried underneath. I was starting to worry about my fingers when I reached in without concentrating!! So, drawer organizers were definitely necessary. The knife block was still great and I wanted to keep that but everything else had to go. I also cleaned out some duplicate, broken and rarely used utensils. Then Handy Hubby started using some thin strips of scrap wood to create new dividers. I started by laying the tools in categories so I would know where they should be housed together and by how often I used them - measuring cups near the front, rolling pin in the back, and kitchen scissors from and center. He also cut down the knife block so it fit the depth better. Then we started to mess with the layout a bit.
And then a few hours later we had this! Only a few pieces are actually attached to anything so we can change it easily if we want to but I really love it.
We did this back in September and it still looks pretty much the same as the day we installed it.
Woohoo!
