A Surprisingly Easy Way to Add Instant Color and Storage to a Small Kitchen

Arguably, one of the most frustrating parts about grocery shopping is getting to the store only to realize you left your reusable bags buried in a cabinet or in the backseat of your car when you’re at the checkout counter. What’s worse is buying even more recyclable totes only to repeat the cycle. 

If you’ve found yourself sitting in the car with a trunk full of groceries and reusable shopping bags that you didn’t actually need, you’ll want to keep reading. Multi-hyphenate content creator, blogger, YouTuber, and Instagram strategist Marikah — who goes by MJ — shares an ingenious solution that doubles as a small kitchen storage idea.

The solution: hanging stylish grocery bags in your direct eyesight. In MJ’s bohemian Brooklyn apartment, she cleverly strung four colorful mesh bags (here’s a similar find as MJ’s are out of stock!) on tall IKEA racks. 

“Use mesh bags to store things like fruits or vegetables,” MJ wrote at the time of her house tour. “You can also use them to store your laundry necessities like the dryer sheets, masks to grab and go, shoe covers for when guests or maintenance workers come to do work in your apartment, etc.”

Having bags (especially colorful options!) at eye level increases the chances that you’ll be more apt to grab one when you’re bolting out the door for grocery shopping. But, like MJ said, it’s also a way to store miscellaneous items. If you don’t have room for cabinet organizers or you’ve utilized your vertical storage — these bags discreetly hide your items and are colorful decorative items. 

And speaking of utilizing vertical storage, MJ says that adding the IKEA storage racks (here’s a similar option!) was a “game-changer” for their kitchen’s functionality. New York City kitchens are notorious for being on the smaller side — just peek into this roughly 20-square-foot kitchen.

With the help of the multiple-level shelves, MJ can store a perfect menagerie of home items. Items like suitcases, a bowl of fruit, toilet paper, colorful mesh bags, and cooking pots all fit seamlessly onto their designated shelves — making them easy to grab in a moment’s notice. 

This clever (and stylish!) hack isn’t the only smart design decision in MJ’s home. To learn more creative ways to style your space, visit the full house tour on Apartment Therapy. 

This post originally appeared on The Kitchn. See it there: A Surprisingly Easy Way to Add Instant Color and Storage to a Small Kitchen