RV Kitchen Storage Hacks
Small spaces. The RV life is not for the pack rats (check out our tips for your bathroom here)
but the kitchen can be your greatest enemy in the quest for organization. Thankfully, there’s a plethora of hacks for maximizing your storage!
First, let’s look at what you have: cabinets, pantry, drawers, and most importantly: the wall!
Wall Mounting
The walls are your greatest resource. With a bit of creativity, practical shopping, and drill use you can create great storage room!
Looking at the basics we can use wall hooks, spice racks, magnetic knife strips, mounted paper towel holders, and more.
Hooks can be great for towels, cooking utensils, and pots and pans. Hooks will have different carry weights so just make sure you’re using the right type. For the lighter objects, you can probably get away with adhesive hooks like those from Command.
No Bull Tip! Some items, like pots and pans, shouldn’t stay hung up during travel to avoid damage. You can temporarily put them in the sink, or even a bin in a closet or in the living area where it won’t slide around.
Another way to reduce wall damage (which in an RV, can’t be as easily patched as drywall) is to use magnetic racks. These can be stuck to the fridge to hold spices and other lightweight kitchen items.
A paper towel holder that mounts to the bottom of your cabinet (or inside a door) will free up counter space and keep it handy but out of the way. It can also be used to hang regular kitchen towels too! We recommend getting one with a removable bar, instead of one where you slide the paper towel roll on and this can be a difficult maneuver in smaller spaces.
Then we come to another magnetic option to save drawer space: a magnetic knife strip. It’s exactly what it sounds like and is strong enough (in the good cases) that even during travel knives stay in place! (Remember, these are also great in the bathroom for any metal things like nail clippers).
Finally, we recommend magazine holders to create more vertical storage space. These can hold things like frying pans, pot lids, cutting boards – honestly whatever you want that can fit!
Cabinets
Now we’re going to move into maximizing your cabinet storage. One big tip from organizers is turn your cabinets into drawers with bins. Being able to pull things out instead of rattling around in a cabinet can make things infinitely easier! Just remember to measure to the lip of the shelf to find the correct size and shape. And if you don’t want the bins moving around (say in a longer cupboard) you can use a rubber shelf liner.
Second on this section are shelf racks; if you have a tall shelf you can improve your use of it by adding another shelf! There are lots of the market of varying sizes and materials so there’s one to suit everyone!
You can also find racks built specifically to go under your sink and fit around your plumbing, or even snag a dish drying rack that hangs from the sides of the sink or even one that you can install to hang above it!
Purchase Practically
Minimize clutter and maximize storage by purchasing practical RV accessories, like nesting mixing bowls, pots, and pans. Multi-use items are also practical, like oven safe bowls that double as pans or things that stack practically like cups and mugs! If you’re worried about some of these thing rubbing against each other during travel you can put a kitchen towel in between them.
Then there’s the collapsible items; colanders, funnels, storage containers, pet dishes – new ones feel like they’re added every day!
French Press or Pour Over Coffee Makers
Save on counter space with smaller coffee makers. Sure there are single serving coffee makers, but these two are much more compact and easy to pack and store.
Less is More
This probably seems like a lot but really if you’ve found something that works for you don’t change it! Don’t go start buying new things because someone else told you to – let’s de-influence okay? These are just our recommendations, heck maybe some inspiration! Let us know if there’s something you do or use that’s not on this list and help some other campers out!