One of the main complaints of today's homeowners is that there is never enough under counter knife storage space in the kitchen. If you are thinking about remodeling your kitchen, now is the time to add that all needed extra storage. There are so many beautiful and creative storage solutions incorporated into today's cabinets, that just about any need can be met.

And that's where you start: determine what bothers you the most about your storage lacks in you present kitchen. Think about how your family uses the kitchen. Do you cook a lot, or just heat up? Do you have friends over frequently?

Next step, go to as many home centers and kitchen showrooms as you can to get ideas. Browse magazines and on the net to find out what the latest and greatest storage ideas as being installed in modern kitchens. Start a file with pictures, ideas, layouts.

If you are designing a custom kitchen, you will have a designer who can assist you in the types of storage that you may need and that are available.

Here are just a few of the wonderful space saving, convenient and efficient storage solutions that you will learn about and be able to choose from:

-An appliance garage to keep your small appliances handy but out of sight (and clean)

-A lazy Susan for spices, condiments and other items you may want handy as you cook. It makes use of a corner of the counter top that is otherwise wasted.

-Glass cabinets that show off the contents if you have lovely dishes or glasses. This should be limited to one or two, since you do want to be able to hide a lot of items as well.

-A wine rack that is built into one of the cabinets. You can display your vintage wines, and you can have a wine rack with a door that will keep the bottles safe.

-A bookcase for cook books. This can be installed into an upper cabinet, or into the walls of a kitchen island.

-Specialized spice drawers, especially good for gourmet cooks. They can be installed under the cabinets, or in a special narrow pull out cabinet.

-Pull out garbage cans under a counter. Some people like to have two: one for garbage and one for recyclables.

-Carry cases that can hold all you cleaning supplies together and can be pulled out and carried around when needed.

-Drawers and cabinets with custom designed dividers for the kind of items you have in the kitchen. For instance, you can have tall sections to place pizza pans, cookie trays, serving platters.

-Special racks to keep all your storage needs in such as foil, plastic wrap, sandwich bags and garbage bags

-An under counter knife storage rack that pulls down from under a cabinet. This has two important benefits. You don't have to reach into a drawer to get a sharp knife and risk injury, and children cannot reach the knives.

-Drawers with partition separators to organize all of your utensils, kitchen gadgets and general "junk". It keeps everything neat and accessible instead of piled on top of each other.

-A pull down cookbook rack. This attaches under a cabinet and is out of site when it is not used, but keeps the cookbook handy at eye level and away from cooking splatters when you are using it.

As you can see, there are so many storage ideas to choose from, that you just have to determine what is most important to you and your family, and you can make your kitchen a dream place to be because of its organization and efficiency.