These Sliding Kitchen Drawers Are Impossibly Easy To Install And Use

After "Umm, remember those trout leftovers we put in the fridge last month?" and "I thought you set the timer," the most dreaded words in the kitchen might be "It's in the back of the cabinet somewhere." Unless you're storing small bales of hay in your kitchen for some reason, the design of base cabinets doesn't make a lot of sense. You will inevitably either not use the back of the cabinets, wasting storage space, or you'll use the back for things you never use and can't reach anyway — also wasting storage space. 

What the world needed was some sort of magical device you could insert into an open space in a cabinet, which would then slide out when you pulled it, giving access to stuff in the back of that space. And, as always, industry has provided by inventing (okay, by reinventing) the drawer. In this case, it's a version of a drawer that's one of the best kitchen cabinet organizers for making storage a breeze.

These are actually pull-out shelves. Designed specifically for sticking to the bottom of cabinets with doors, they don't require a defined space or carefully placed drawer slides. They simply adhere to the bottom of your cabinets, which instantly functions as a far more useful, organized, and pleasant drawer space. They have enough of a vertical lip to function like a drawer if needed, though the sides are probably mostly there to keep things from sliding off, as they might from a flat shelf.

These black carbon steel drawers have permanently mounted slides on the bottom of the drawer, rather than on the side, as you'd normally see with a regular drawer. It comes with two double-sided nano adhesive strips, also known as nano tape. These are applied to the bottoms of the slides and then stuck to the bottom or shelves in your cabinet. So far so good. However, what is nano tape, and can you trust it with your canned goods and rolls of aluminum foil?

The manufacturer of these shelves, HIKITMATE, never really specifies what nano tape is on the Amazon listing, but according to tape manufacturer Kunshan Yuhuan Package Materials Co., nano tape generally refers to "the densely distributed surface of the material has a large number of nano-scale micropores, so that the tape has a super adsorption force, and it can easily adhere to the surface of various objects." It's not entirely clear what that means, but the MIT Technology Review describes a version of nanotube tape that mimics the nanostructures on a gecko's feet, with the ability for the tape to be removed without damage. Either way, it is very strong, but if you're looking for a more secure option, the HIKITMATE shelf's slider design makes it possible to reinforce the slides with screws driven directly into the cabinets.

These particular HIKITMATE drawers (similar designs are offered by other brands as well) have 4.8 stars with around 220 Amazon ratings as of this writing, with few substantial complaints among reviewers. Some claim that the listing falsely describes these drawers as adjustable or expandable, but the company had updated a newer model (from Amazon, $39.77) that's described as expandable; it appears to be a version of the same design with an adjustable width. Some buyers also complained that lips on the front of cabinets will prevent these drawers from working properly, which many cabinets do have. One reviewer questioned the height of the drawers, and another asked why the four available sizes are all only 16.5 inches deep when base cabinets are generally 21 to 24 inches deep — a reasonable question. If the price seems a bit high, you always have the option of DIYing your own drawers and pull-out shelves.

But these pull-outs have a lot going for them. They install in seconds — easier, even, than the easiest sliding shelves we've found to date — and have a removable guide rail for cleaning. They are quiet, operate smoothly, and gently snap into place when fully rolled inside cabinets so that they'll stay in position. They probably have uses beyond improving your base cabinets, too. One reviewer affixed one to his countertop so he could reposition his kettle when needed. And it seems like these would also be very useful on craft room shelves, and in workshops overrun with deep shelves and cans of chemicals many layers deep.