Most people have pot drawers that are 30" or even 36". Check out the total span of your largest frying pans with handles, and note that that will pretty much eat up that 24" space, so where do you put the other pans? If you don't have enough width, you wind up stacking the pots and pans so much that it becomes cumbersome.

Also note: what is the INTERNAL width of your drawer? The actual usable interior space? Some cabinets will waste 2" or 3" on each side of the drawer. The cabinet is a 24" wide cabinet but the interior of the drawer is less than 20".

here is a thread asking about 20, 24" wide drawers that may be helpful

Here is a link that might be useful: How wide are your drawers?

Go wider on you pot drawers. Also, think carefully about pullout shelves v. drawers. Drawers may cost a little more, but they require only a single pull; pullout shelves require you to open a door (or 2) fully, then pull out a shelf.

We store pots & pans in our 36" set, plastic ware & baking stuff in the 33" set and kitchen towels & tinfoil/plastic bags, etc., in the 24" set. The top (shallow) drawers all hold utensils and / silverware. I am so glad I insisted on drawers!

Although, I wish I had held my ground on the 12" (door) cabinet for baking sheets and cutting boards, instead of the spice pullout DH wanted. I find the spice (and oils, etc) pullout to be a bit awkward. I don't like bending down to choose spices. Would have preferred to have them in a--you guessed it--drawer!

You can see the pullout and a portion of my 36" drawers here"

Good luck!

Thank you so much for the responses. This helps a lot! What options does one have for spice drawers? I see some that look like a big waste of space since I have some spice cans that are very large (parsley) and some that are tiny (the small cans, paprika, etc) I have all different brands, too, so all the containers are different shapes/sizes. I haven't seen a spice drawer set up that looks like it would accommodate all of this? Currently, my spices are all just thrown in a drawer willy-nilly.

Re spices: Well, that's where upper cabinets come in so handy. I was going to add Ikea metal shelves at the top of the backsplash for spices (in Ikea jars), but DH got his way with the pullout :-(

I still bought the Ikea jars, and transferred spices into them.

I've seen drawer inserts that allow you to display spice jars. Try Container Store or Ikea.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ikea Spice Jars

Re spices: I have too many so I decided to put an extra (narrow) shelf on my backsplash. Spice drawers I've seen don't fit too many spices. I don't mind the look of different containers for now, eventually I may replace them with better spice jars. I do have larger containers in my pantry and refill as needed. For those I use in larger quantities, I just keep a larger container inside the cabinet next to the range, right with my oil, soy sauce, etc.

Here is a link that might be useful: zoom in for the spice shelf

abbycat9990 - how wide are the handles on your 36" drawers?. Also, can you tell me where you got those pendants. They are gorgeous.

maddie_maddie: We used the same size handle on all cabinets. They span 14.25"; got them at HP Design Expo. No idea on brand, sorry.

The pendants are from Ikea! I saw them again recently at the Atlanta store, so I assume they are widely available. They were around $40 each.

Drop the sides on your pot drawers, and you will have more useable space because the handles can hang over the edge. They are also easier to maneuver in and out of the drawer with the sides dropped. I just nest the lids into the tops of the pans.
Or: if you can't drop the sides, seriously consider pullout shelves.

Lemonade: Are your drawers 36-inches? I am trying to convince my husband that is the size we need but he keeps insisting that 24-inch drawers are easier to handle. Currently on our plans we have 2 stacked, sided by side, 24-inch drawers under a 48-inch cooktop. Can anyone provide an alternative solution to get bigger drawers? The way I see it is there would be 3-inches on each side left over using 36-inch drawers. What would we do with the extra leftover? Thanks!

Kulagal

Here are 3 drawer sizes:

24" drawers

33" drawers

36" drawers

Regarding drawers, we had two 30" wide drawers under the cooktop in our last kitchen specifically for pots and pans. With this new kitchen, we'll be getting two 36" drawers. Both widths were adequate for us, but I definitely would not go with 24".
Regarding spice storage, like Petra, I have a lot of spices. Last kitchen I kept them all in the upper cab next to the cooktop. My KD and a decorator friend both encouraged me to go with a spice drawer and a lower pull-out shelf cab for this reno. I'm probably going to have to buy some spice jars to transfer some of the spices into for the drawer. Larger things will go in the pull-out below. I'm really enjoying reading about other people's solutions to this spice storage. Thanks for the great thread!

I have no photos to share, and won't for months since my kitchen is still on blueprint. But the showroom I am working with has a great idea that I'm using. The pull-out drawers under the rangetop LOOKED like 2 stacked drawers, but instead when you pulled it open, a really deep base drawer opened and there was a much shallower, hidden pull-out above that hugely deep drawer for pot lids and smaller pots. The KD called them "pot pullouts w/lid storage". They look great when shut and the interior dimensions make great sense to me.

If you really want to see it, let me know and I'll take a picture next time I'm there.

I have a 48" range and will have two of these 24" wide

I am quite intrigued by the "pot pullouts w/lid storage" mentioned above. Anybody happen to have a picture? Does anybody know if this is available through a cabinet manufacturer or is this only done in custom cabinets?

kulagal, i'm squeezing in some 36s, because the way i figure it, each drawer you have side by side adds to (or rather, takes away from) available space. each drawer side has what? 1/2 or 3/4 inch per side. depending on the width of your drawer sides and your cab sides, you could lose a lot of horizontal storage by breaking them into 2 stacks. not to mention, it limits the size of things you can put into a drawer.

it's why even for the shallow top drawer on my stack, i'm keeping it as one 36 inch drawer. if i want to divide the insides later, i can but it gives me the option of storing long things too.

try a search for 6 or 12 or "small" cab spaces. i have seen some really interesting and useful ways to use that extra space on this site.

good luck.

I have all my spices (all different sizes & containers) on three 12" diameter lazy susans stored in a wall cabinet to the right of my stove. That way I easily see all the spices at a quick turn and I don't need special containers.

I'm still planning my new kitchen and my planned 36" pot drawers had to be reduced to 30" to get in another cabinet. Before I would agree to the reduction, I took all of my pots and pans and laid they out within 30" of space to make sure they would all fit. Try experimenting with the different sizes of drawers to see what fits your pots & pans.

Abbeycat: Your pics no longer show up...is it possible to make them visible again?

smarge:
Is it possible to see a picture of the "pot pull-out w/lid storage" you described above? TIA

Good thread!

We installed 36" pots/pans drawers and I'm very happy that I didn't go any smaller--I don't have a lot of pans but it's nice to not have to stack and cram them into shorter drawers. (Which I would have, even if they were 30"). I also have a set of 30" and a set of 18" drawers--they all handle similarly so don't think that 36" will be too unwieldy. The drawer glide hardware is very nice and all my drawers operate well regardless of size.

Here is a link of a pot/pan drawer with an internal lid storage drawer. My DH and I are going round & round over which is better. This type of cabinet with the hidden lid storage or a cabinet with 3 drawers (2 large pot drawers & 1 skinny lid drawer). Any opinions would be helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sample pot drawer with hidden lid storage

Does anyone use a drawer like above to store their pan lids?