Accessories are where kitchen remodel budgets quietly inflate. You’re finalizing your cabinet order, someone shows you an upgraded corner solution or an appliance garage, and it looks great. You add it. Then you add a few more. By the end you’ve added $2,000 to $4,000 in accessories and you’re not sure all of them were necessary.
Some of them were. Some of them weren’t.
After 30 years in the cabinet industry, I have opinions about which is which. Here’s my honest breakdown.
Worth the Money
Pull-Out Trash and Recycling
This is at the top of the list for a reason. A pull-out trash cabinet converts your kitchen’s worst problem — a freestanding trash can sitting on your floor taking up space and collecting grime underneath — into a clean, integrated solution.
What to look for in a quality unit: full-extension slides so the cans come all the way out, a sturdy mounting system (the door should pull the drawer with it, not require two hands), and a frame that accommodates the can sizes you actually use. Cheap versions wobble and the door-to-drawer connection loosens over time. Spend a little more here — you’ll open this thing multiple times a day for the next 15 years.
If your kitchen is small and you’re tight on base cabinet space, this is still worth prioritizing over other accessories. The floor space you reclaim is worth it.
Soft-Close Hinges and Drawer Slides
If your cabinets don’t include soft-close hardware as a standard feature, add it. This is not a luxury item.
The sound and feel of your cabinetry is something you’ll experience dozens of times a day. A kitchen where the drawers glide in and close quietly is noticeably different from one where they bang and wobble. Beyond aesthetics, soft-close hardware reduces wear on the cabinet box over time — the constant impact of doors and drawers slamming adds up.
Most quality semi-custom and custom lines include soft-close as standard now. If yours doesn’t, the upgrade cost is usually modest and always worth it.
Deep Drawer Base Cabinets for Pots and Pans
This one shifts the conversation from “accessories” to “how you configure your base cabinets,” but it belongs here because people still default to a standard base cabinet with a single shelf for their pots and pans — and then wonder why their lower cabinets are a disaster.
A three-drawer base cabinet (one deep bottom drawer for large pots, a shallower middle drawer for lids, top drawer for smaller items) is dramatically more functional than a door cabinet with a shelf where the back half is inaccessible. You can see everything, reach everything, and nothing requires unloading the front to get to the back.
If you cook at all, put at least one deep drawer base cabinet where your pots and pans are going. You’ll use it every day.
Pull-Out Shelves in Base Cabinets
Standard base cabinets with doors have a problem: the back half of the cabinet is essentially dead space. You put things back there, you forget about them, and then you spend three minutes on your knees unloading the front to get to what you need.
A pull-out shelf converts that dead space into accessible storage. The shelf slides out on full-extension hardware, everything is visible, and you’re not contorting yourself to reach anything.
Not every base cabinet needs a pull-out shelf — for cabinets where you store infrequently used items, it may not be worth the cost. But for everyday storage, especially pantry items or cleaning supplies under the sink, it’s a straightforward improvement with immediate daily payoff.
Drawer Organizer Inserts
Utensil dividers, knife blocks, spice inserts — these are worth it if they’re sized for your drawers and actually used.
The key is getting them spec’d to your drawer dimensions when you order, not buying a generic organizer from a home goods store afterward. An insert that fits your drawer precisely is more functional than one you’re shimming with folded cardboard.
For the knife drawer specifically: a proper in-drawer knife organizer keeps blades protected and the drawer looking organized long-term. It’s a small cost with a clear functional benefit.
The caveat: only add what you’ll actually use. An insert for a type of storage you don’t currently have or won’t maintain doesn’t solve a real problem — it just adds cost.
Not Worth It for Most People
Lazy Susans
Let me be direct about lazy susans: they’re better than leaving a corner cabinet completely inaccessible, but they’re still a compromise.
The problem is geometry. A corner cabinet is an awkward space, and a lazy susan makes it easier to reach things that would otherwise be completely buried — but the rotation radius means you still lose usable space, items fall off the shelves, and you’re still dealing with the same corner angles.
A blind corner pull-out is usually a better solution. It uses a set of linked shelves that pull out and swing clear, giving you actual access to the full depth of the cabinet without the rotation problem. It costs more than a lazy susan, but it works better.
If your budget is tight and you need to pick one or the other, the blind corner pull-out is the upgrade worth making.
Built-In Appliance Garages
Appliance garages look sharp in a showroom. A dedicated space for your stand mixer, toaster, or coffee maker with a roll-up or hinged door that tucks it away when not in use. Clean countertops, everything in its place.
Here’s the reality: appliance garages have a fixed height and depth that limits what actually fits. That height is determined when you design the kitchen, not when you buy a new appliance in three years that’s slightly taller. Outlets inside need to be planned carefully and sometimes become code issues. And the door mechanism — whether roll-up or swing — adds something else to maintain.
More often than not, the appliance garage either doesn’t fit your appliances well, becomes a catch-all for things that don’t belong there, or the door stops getting closed regularly because it’s one more step.
If you genuinely want dedicated appliance storage, open upper cabinet space or a pantry cabinet with appliance-depth shelving is usually more flexible and more functional.
Built-In Bread Boxes and Cutting Board Inserts
These show up in higher-end cabinet lines and look intentional. A pull-out cutting board built into the cabinet, a breadbox drawer with ventilation, a built-in knife block integrated into a drawer front.
The novelty wears off faster than you’d think. A pull-out cutting board is thinner than the one you actually like using, gets used as a staging surface for dishes, and becomes annoying to deal with when it’s in the way. A built-in breadbox limits where you can put the bread you actually buy in whatever size bag it comes in.
These features solve problems that most homeowners don’t actually have, at a cost that adds up across an order. Pass on them unless one specifically addresses a real, specific frustration in your current kitchen.
The Bottom Line on Accessories
Accessories add up fast. A pull-out here, an organizer there, a specialty corner solution — you can add $3,000 to $5,000 to a cabinet order without a lot of effort.
My advice: figure out what actually frustrates you about your current kitchen. Where do you lose things? What’s a pain to access? What takes up floor space it shouldn’t? Start there. Those are the problems worth solving. The accessories that solve a real daily frustration are worth the money. The ones that look good in a catalog but don’t address a specific pain point in how you cook and live — skip them.
Not Sure What You Actually Need?
This is part of what a design consultation covers. We’ll talk through your kitchen, how you use it, and which accessories make sense for your specific layout and budget.
Book your free remote design consultation: Schedule a call with Steve
Or visit kitchensbyremote.com to learn more.
Kitchens By Remote — Steve Eisenmenger, 30+ years cabinet industry experience. Serving homeowners in all 48 states.