Cooking Tools
Pot Holders
Pots & Pans (especially the 24" cabinet)
Baking Tools
Frequently used spices, oils, etc.

Do you have a separate prep area where you store your prep tools? If not or even if you do and the prep area is next to the range, consider storing prep tools, mixing bowls, etc.

Will you have a tray cabinet elsewhere? If so, you may not want another one...or you might, depending on how many cookie sheets, etc. you have.

HTH!

FWIW I have a 24" base on the right side of my range and a 21" base on the left. The 24" has 4 drawers- 3 shallow and one deep. The shallow drawers hold cooking utenstils, plastic wrap and the like (no problems keeping these next to the range) and rolling pins. The deep one holds small appliances like the waffle iron & mini chopper that don't get used regularly.

The 21" has one shallow drawer & two deep- shallow is used for silverware, deep for tupperware, cocktail stuff, etc. I cannot tell you enough how much I love having all drawers for base cabs! These smaller drawers are very handy & I never find myself digging for stuff. The fronts are all framed so that even though one side has 3 drawers & the other has 4 it doesn't look uneven.

I keep things like cookie sheets in the cab over the fridge. No bending, just reach up & grab a corner. This may not be an option for you but I love it. I can store a ton of thing accessibly.

Good luck!

Nina

sigh, it would be great if you had a pic showing your range flanked between the 3-dwr 21" wide cab, and the 4-dwr 24" wide cab. Seems a bit confusing, but yet you say it doesn't look uneven.

I may need to have 24" and 27" wide cabinets, but they would both have three drawers.

Personally, it would drive me crazy to have my utensils behind me instead of beside me when I work at the stove. On each end of my stove wall run, I have cabinets with no drawer, just full-ht cabinet with doors on the front. These were meant for the giant items a family our size tends to use...But I am missing having a drawer in at least one of the spots, and not sure I really need all that ht in a cabinet. Having the drawer at the top is really very useful.

You could do pullouts...

Or. see these links

Rev-A-Shelf Universal Spice Tray, White
Rev-A-Shelf 18 Inch Wicker Basket and Liner (could then put "extra inches" in adjacent cabinet)
Rev-A-Shelf Ready Recycler, Waste Mgmt. System
Rev-A-Shelf Chrome 60 lb. Mixer Lift or Appliance Lift
Rev-A-Shelf Pull-Out Pantry, -Shorty-, White
Rev-A-Shelf 24 Inch Pull-Out Cookware Organizer Chrome
Rev-A-Shelf 24 Inch Pull-Out Cookware Organizer Chrome
Rev-A-Shelf 24 Inch Drop-In Cookware Organizer Chrome
Rev-A-Shelf 24 Inch Pull-out Dinnerware Organizer
Rev-A-Shelf 21 Inch Pull-Out Condiment Organizer

NEVER (caps intentional) give up your shallow top drawers. I don't think you can ever have enough space at waist height for really small items that wouldn't be right for a larger, deeper drawer or shelf. I'm thinking here about the tiny stuff I corral in those drawers: rubber bands, twist-ties, peel-and-stick labels for leftovers packages, DH's collection of corkscrews, corn-cob holders, pet food can lids and scoops, cake decorating bags and tips, flat packages of cheesecloth, boxes of batteries, and on, and on. I'm only going to have one full-height cabinet, and that's only because I needed someplace to stow some very large trays.

I have to have spatulas, large spoons, slotted utensils at my finger tips when at the stove. Often i find myself reaching in for something mid stir, flip, or fold. I strongly suggest you keep the top shallow drawers.

OK, if it was me and I had to have matching cabinets on each side I would put in cabinets like the one under our mixer.

{{!gwi}}

And I would use them like this:

Cabinet 1
Top Drawer: a couple of sharp knives (1 large and 1 small), garlic press, lemon squeezer, egg beater, pizza cutter, measuring cups and spoons, rubber scrapers, whisks, spatulas, large spoons, ladels, tongs
Lower Drawer: teas
Lower Cupboard with dividers: muffin pans, cutting boards, cookie sheets, pizza pans and stones (the cupboard below our mixer has dividers where we store these type of things.)

Cabinet 2
Top Drawer: spices
Lower drawer: hot mitts, hot pads, timers
Lower cabinet with pull out: stock pots

I really love these type of cabinets. We store stock pots on roll outs in both cabinets flanking our sink:

{{gwi:1570742}}

Thanks everyone. Ok, I got the message - definitely drawers on the top and may be even two like Zelmar's.

Zelmar, do you know how much vertical space is there in the lower cupboard of your cabinets that you posted above?
For your stock pot cabinets, is there a reason you went with a rollout and not a deep drawer?

Hi annab6, The cupboard is 15" high. Good question about the drawer--I can't see any reason why it wouldn't be just as good, and maybe better, than a cupboard with roll out. I believe some people even put tray dividers in deep drawers. I didn't figure where everything would go when I planned the kitchen which worked out well because some of the space isn't used as I had originally envisioned. I felt as though a cupboard would be more versatile because I could always take out the roll out and divide the space with a shelf if that was the type of storage I needed. Plus, I already had a lot of drawers in the kitchen. Also, the short cupboard reminded me of an old hutch I used as an inspiration piece--the top drawers (under the counter) of the hutch were fairly deep making the lower cupboard portion about the same size as these cupboards. I understand why people love their drawers--I feel the same about a lot of our drawer storage.

Here's the best shot that I have of the base cabs flanking the range. It's before the pulls & countertop were in. Please ignore the large camera hog of a dog who plopped herself down in front of the range:

And here's how the finished product looks, though you don't get as good a shot of the base cabs. (I'm still trying to decide on the back splash but we've replaced the dixie cup pendants with actual fixtures):

I really wanted everything to be symmetrical but the usefulness of the shallow drawers is a big plus. And since the set up is the same all of the way around the base cabinets (solid drawer face for the top drawer & framed faces for all drawers beneath) it all flows nicely.

Anyway, for me, I love it & I can easily find exactly what I need. But you have to figure out what's going to work best for you & how you work in the kitchen. Good luck! I hope this helped.

Nina

Zelmar, I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you how much I love how your arrange your cupboards on either side of your sink. Everytime I see pictures of your kitchen, I think "Wow" how neat that looks......just like an old fashion hutch. In fact, I wondered if the sizes worked for you but really didn't care so much because it just looked so fabulous!!

Love, love your kitchen and this coming from a white cabinet fan!!

Thank you zoey neohio! I appreciate your comments. I also love white kitchens. I would have had a really difficult time choosing but DH works from a shop attached to our house and he gets pretty grungy. I've learned that light colors just don't work for us (gray was the color of choice for a long time--walls, sofas....)

i wouldn't do small top drawers next to a stove. most of the stuff people mentioned keeping in those drawers, i'd prefer to keep elsewhere in the kitchen.

when i'm working near the stove, i want lots of storage for stove-related stuff. pots/pans, baking sheets, baking dishes, etc. i keep my cooking utensils in a large crock on the counter to the left of the range for easy access, so have no use for smaller upper drawers.

i like the OP's idea of a large cabinet with tray dividers on one side, and then on the other side i'd do 2 very large deep drawers for pots and pans.

Hello all,

Iam redoing my kitchen which is shaped like an L. The range is in the smaller part of the L and not centered. On the left of range there will be a 12 inch wall cabinet and on the right there will be a 21 inch wall cabinet. I'd like to put a wall mount hood but it would look strange to have just a long skinny 12 in cabinet on its on and would like to get rid of it. Would it look unbalanced to have shelves in the 12 inch area and a 21 inch cabinet on other side or should I get rid of all wall cabs around range hood? Attached are the pics. Any advice would be most helpful.

I don’t think the 12” cabinet will look that bad...this is a pretty typical layout. It’ll especially look fine if you have double doors on the 21” cabinet, so the doors are close to the same size. If you do open shelves in the 12”, I think they’ll look so short and have less visual weight than the cabinets. I’m afraid it’ll look like you couldn’t fit in a cabinet, so made do? Just my immediate thought on it.

Do you not like corner cabinets, or is there a reason you can’t have one? If you had a corner cabinet, the door sizes on the stove wall would be all approximately 12”, and you might be able to adjust the sink wall so that an upper is centered over your sink. Are you ok with the uppers so low over your sink? But maybe those issues don’t matter to you or in what you’re going for in the look.

An unrelated thought: I would encourage putting a deeper cabinet above the fridge, or bringing that one out somehow so it looks deeper. It will be difficult to access the one as drawn.

Hopefully it's not too late to make changes to the cabinets on the sink wall. I think you need to line up the wall cabinets over the base cabinets on the sink wall. Any cabinet directly over the sink area should be raised up to at least 30" (or more) above the countertop so a taller person doesn't feel confined. Plus it looks better. That wall, as drawn, just doesn't look right. Cabinets need to be balanced.