Hey, buddies! Let’s talk about open shelving today! Let’s explore if you should do it, how to do it cheaply, where all the “stuff” goes, if it gets dusty…if you got more questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll add it in too!

I’ll be the first to say that open shelving in the kitchen could probably be considered a trend and if you’re like me, you don’t want to go ripping out perfectly good cabinets if you are just going to put them back in four years from now. That kind of stuff always holds me back from going for something (like shiplapping my entire house! lol) that I worry could just be a trend. But I also think we shouldn’t sit around in our house and just leave things the same and hate it…just in case XYZ may happen.

Which brings me to my own open shelving in my home. A little background: we built our house (well, a builder did) and our house is just over four years old. After living here for two years and seeing the open shelving all over Pinterest and IGland, I wanted open shelving. But I knew my husband wouldn’t be down with ripping out two year old cabinets and putting up open shelving. And, to be honest, I’m not sure I was down with that either.

Since I knew there wasn’t much of a chance for it to happen, I pushed the idea aside until about a year later. I was looking at someone’s open shelving and realized that they had simply taken the doors off their cabinets! I began to eye my own cabinet doors with a gleam of a project in my eye. When I brought the idea up to Benjamin, his response was the standard, “But where will all the stuff go?” You know what stuff I’m talking about here. The stuff that you want BEHIND a cabinet door.

Where did all the stuff go? We have a little pantry-ish(???) area near our kitchen. I bought some plastic wall shelves type thing from Target for food storage to go in the pantry. We had some wood shelves that we put in there to store our larger kitchen gadgets. That’s where all the un-pretty things went. But here’s the thing: useful things can absolutely go up on your open kitchen shelving. My mixing bowls, collanders, canisters, glassware are all out on my open shelving. There are salad bowls and cookbooks on those shelves. But here’s the key to making it not look like a cluttered mess…go with white or neutral dishes. Now, I know there’s someone out there with a myriad of colors out there on their open shelving and it looks amazing, but most of us (including me) need to realize that takes a special talent. I bought a few white mixing bowls to replace some old ones that needed replacing anyway. I had swapped out my dishes for white ones a few years earlier. There are a few fun pops of color here and there, but for the most part, the stuff up on the kitchen shelves are white.

I get asked a lot about dust. Of course, some of this stuff gets dusty. But most are dishes we use a lot. We do shelf wipe downs here and there. But the dust issue hasn’t been a big deal for us and definitely wouldn’t make me reconsider taking the cabinet doors off.

Not too long ago, someone on IG commented that they preferred the before picture with the cabinet doors on. So, obviously, open shelving isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I really love it. I feel like it gave my kitchen more personality and allowed me to be creative.