If you’re looking for a way to organize a small apartment kitchen, you only need to glance out your window for inspiration. It’s easy to draw parallels between limited kitchen space and the limited amount of land within New York City’s borders that’s available for development. The solution New York (and all other urban centers) found was going vertical, so why not apply that to the kitchen?  I’ve been able to achieve a fairly organized vertical kitchen by adding a few key items and creating cabinet system.

I was able to increase both my counter space and available shelving by getting a kitchen cart (it was actually an anniversary gift from my boyfriend). Its proximity to the stove makes simultaneous cooking and preparation easy and the shelving below serves as a place for my cookbook collection and appliance storage. 

Narrow shelving under awkwardly high cabinets serves as my storage for serving pieces, mixing bowls, and my indoor gardening supplies. The benefit of the aforementioned awkwardly high cabinets is that I can fit a 3-tiered hanging fruit basket above the shelving for most of my weekly produce. 
 

Finally, rigid cabinet organization helps round things out. Each cabinet shelf has a designated theme, from spices to prepared foods to sauces to breakfast items. I place the most-used items on the bottom shelves since reaching anything on the top shelves requires grabbing a chair to stand on. And, because I like to exact control over my kitchen to a degree some may find unhealthy, each shelf is labeled.