New Spot for an Old Thing

Check out this Site to Retrofit Your Existing Cabinets with FilesToday’s tip seems harmless “Stick a small office file cabinet into an empty corner of the kitchen and corral everything from coupons to recipes.” —Kelly Osborne, from seejanework.com. Now if it looks like the photo on left? Everything will be fine. This is a PERFECT solution for all Classics and Funs. Seriously, couldn’t be better. The problem is when Classics and Funs cheap out and buy an ugly file cabinet and stick it in the kitchen or if Organics and Smarts — wooed by this obviously cool idea — buy this and then feel like failures when it languishes unused as papers pile up on the counter above. 

Because Classics & Funs are natural filers, they could find this handy for paper coming in and out of the kitchen frequently such as coupons and recipes like Ms. Osborne suggested. But it could be for any kind of paper that regularly ends up in your kitchen. If you’ve got kids, chances are they bring a ton of forms and other papers into your kitchen.

The caveats for us Classics & Funs are that the file cabinet should be attractive and it needs to be small and hidden away in a proper home. We love repurposing things — we’re practical beasts at heart — but this often means aesthetics suffer. So, don’t go hauling an old, cruddy filing cabinet into your kitchen and placing it behind your kitchen table. It’s not hidden there. Consider retrofitting an existing kitchen cabinet with pull out drawers from The Container Store or this Rev-a-Shelf product. If buying a new file cabinet that goes with your décor (like a lateral wood paneled one) seems silly, then consider getting two recipe boxes. One for coupons, and one for, drum roll … recipes, duh.

This recipe box is NOT ideal for Organics & Smarts. And a file cabinet is never good for you when it comes to papers you want to frequently access. As you are big picture thinkers, you naturally like to pile papers into broad categories so file cabinets tend to languish unused because you can’t see all your stuff.  If you wanted to use file folders to hold recipes (i.e., if you often tear them out of magazines and don’t have the time to transcribe on to an actual recipe card) consider getting an In-box just for those tear outs and while you’re at it, get a bunch of In-Boxes to hold all your various piles and categories. If you insist on using files, think about using an accordian file that expands horizontally, that way the files are at your fingertips and visually in view. It works okay if you’re using those files daily. But the multiple in-boxes on a set of shelves or taking up a whole cabinet is better. Yes it’s not space efficient, but your kitchen counters will fortunately be free of paper.

Originally published April 7, 2010