Before we bought our house, even before we started thinking and looking for a house we would often find ourselves in the kitchen organization aisle at the home improvement stores.  You know the ones, they have every gadget you could possibly imagine, that you never knew you needed until you saw it and realized how you never needed it before because its the BEST THING EVER??!!! Yeah… that aisle.

We would dream and say if we ever built our own house someday and were able to get in there from the very beginning we would have the most awesome organized kitchen we’d ever seen.  Well we didn’t get in to the house before it was built, so we didn’t have any say in the layout (I think the builder is very grateful for this – we’re kind of annoying).  Despite that, we still wanted to do some customization.

Enter Rev a Shelf.  They make all these handy pull out organizers and things for your kitchen that you can install after the fact. Look at all the awesome things they make! (Note: This post is not sponsored or supported by Rev a Shelf)  We wanted it all.  Seriously, we debated in the aisle forever trying to narrow down to a reasonable number.  So we started with this:

They only come in set sizes, so first measure the interior of the cabinet you want to install it in and get the size closest that is not bigger than your cabinet or it will not fit.

The shelf is actually only attached on one side which is how you can get away with a size that is slightly smaller than your cabinet.  Which for us turned out to be useful since the right side of our cabinet doesn’t open all the way due to it being next to the stove.  We were able to combat the problem by screwing the shelf into the left side and it just clears the door.

The shelf is amazing!!! I seriously don’t know how we ever lived without it.  We used to have to take out every pot and pan just to get the one we wanted out of the back of the cabinet.  The slide mechanism of the shelves makes such perfect sense I don’t know why all cabinets aren’t built this way to begin with.  Everything is so easy to find now, and when you see the one you want its easily removable without having to empty everything out.

We loved it so much we put in two more.  Each of the cabinets that are in the center island also got a rev a shelf:

The install isn’t quite as easy as the directions suggest.  They had a complete install time of 30 minutes and it took Ken closer to an hour to do the first one, and he’s an above average to expert assembler.  Despite that, even he says its worth it, and was willing to tackle the project two more times.

So what do you think?  Do you want to install your own?