Why you should leave one kitchen cupboard completely empty, say professional organisers who swear by “white space”

Emily Turner • December 10, 2025 07:17

A mug clinked in the sink, the kettle clicked off, and you opened the “everyday” cupboard with the muscle memory of a thousand mornings. Out slid a leaning tower of plastic tubs, a lid you haven’t seen since 2019, and a pasta packet that rained down like confetti. The radio kept talking about “slow living” while you shoved it all back and hoped the door would stay shut.

Later, a professional organiser stood in that same kitchen and said the strangest thing.

“Empty one cupboard,” she said. “Not declutter. Empty. Leave it blank.”

It sounded wasteful, indulgent even, when storage already feels tight. But she called it white space - and once you see what it does to your kitchen and your head, it’s hard to go back to wall‑to‑wall stuff.

The cupboard that does nothing: why white space matters

White space is the gap between objects, the shelf that isn’t packed to the millimetre, the drawer that closes without negotiating. Designers use it to let your eyes rest. Organisers borrow it to let your brain rest.

In a kitchen, white space is literal: a shelf, a drawer, or an entire cupboard that is intentionally left empty most of the time. Not as a mistake, not because you haven’t got round to filling it, but as a tool.

“If every surface is working at 100%, the room is working at 0%,” one organiser told me. “White space is how a home breathes.”

We’re used to thinking that using all available storage is efficient and grown‑up. Yet packed cupboards slow you down: you move things to reach other things, forget what you own, and keep rebuying cumin because it disappears behind the tins. An empty cupboard is a quiet refusal of that constant shuffle.

Think of it as changing the kitchen’s operating system, not just rearranging icons.

How one empty cupboard calms the whole kitchen

Leaving a cupboard empty feels odd in the first week. Then you start to notice what it does.

It becomes a pressure valve.
When guests arrive with extra serving dishes, when you batch‑cook, when a supermarket deal brings home six tins instead of two, the overflow has somewhere obvious to land. The rest of the cupboards stay tidy instead of slowly bloating.
It cuts visual noise.
Opening a door to blank space is a tiny nervous‑system reset in a room that usually shouts for attention: boiling pans, phone pings, lunchboxes, to‑do lists stuck to the fridge. One organiser calls this her “blink of calm”.
It reveals what doesn’t belong.
When you’ve promised yourself that one cupboard will stay clear, anything drifting towards it - random post, school projects, tools, the “I’ll just park this here” pile - becomes instantly visible. The boundary is obvious, which makes saying “no” easier.
It changes how you buy.
We’ve all had that moment when a bargain‑sized jar felt logical in the shop and ridiculous on the shelf. A dedicated white‑space cupboard turns into a quiet budget coach; you see immediately when short‑term deals start to demand long‑term storage.

A kitchen without any white space is like a calendar without gaps - technically full, practically exhausting.

Where to find your white‑space cupboard

You don’t need a walk‑in pantry or an enormous kitchen island. You need one realistic zone where you’re willing to trade storage for sanity.

Start with these steps:

Scan your cupboards by effort, not by category.
Which doors make you sigh before you open them? Which ones require a mini‑avalanche every time? Those are the best candidates - you’ll feel the difference most clearly there.
Pick a cupboard you can spare, not the one you wish you could.
Often it’s:
- a high shelf of “someday” gadgets,
- the corner unit where things go to be forgotten,
- or the glassware cupboard bloated with mismatched freebies.
Empty it completely.
Take everything out at once. Wipe the shelves. Do not put anything back “just for now”. This is the hard bit and the important bit.
Rehome, don’t relocate the chaos.
- Everyday items find a sensible home in nearby cupboards.
- Duplicates go to donation.
- Once‑a‑year gadgets either earn a labelled spot elsewhere or leave the house.
Close the door on purpose.
Tell the people you live with: “This cupboard stays empty. We use it as breathing room.” The clearer the rule, the easier it is to defend.

For flats and very small kitchens, the white space might not be a full cupboard. It could be one whole shelf, or a drawer kept 80% empty. The principle is the same; the scale adapts.

How white space makes the rest of your storage smarter

The empty cupboard is the headline change, but its real power is how it reshapes the cupboards that remain in use.

Most organising advice jumps straight to matching containers and perfect labels. White‑space organisers flip it: they treat those as finishing touches, not a starting point. The starting point is capacity.

“Decide how much space a category deserves, then respect the boundary,” is how one kitchen specialist put it.

Here’s how that looks in practice:

Assign each category a home with a hard edge.
Baking kit gets one shelf. Dry goods get one section. Mugs get one row. When the space is full, you edit the items, not the boundaries.
Leave slivers of space within each zone.
Aim for 70–80% full, not 100%. That bit of air lets you see what you have, reach things easily, and notice overbuying before it becomes clutter.
Store for movement, not for maximum density.
You shouldn’t have to move three pans to reach a fourth. If you do, the cupboard is doing too much work and white space isn’t doing enough.
Use containers as brakes, not expansion packs.
A bin for snacks, a basket for cleaning products, a lazy Susan for oils - each acts as a physical limit. When it’s full, that’s your cue to pause or pare back.

The goal isn’t minimalism for its own sake. It’s a kitchen that moves at the same speed as your life.

Quick rules professional organisers use in busy kitchens

Once the white‑space cupboard is in place, these small rules keep the whole system from quietly drifting back to chaos.

One in, one out (with a twist).
- New mug in → old chipped one out.
- New gadget in → the gadget it replaces goes, not into a drawer “just in case”.
  The twist: if you can’t bear to let something go, it has to fit the existing space without evicting anything else.
Use “landing pads”, not random piles.
Create a shallow tray or small basket on the worktop for today’s post, forms to sign, or returns to process. Empty it at the end of the day. This stops your empty cupboard from becoming the default dumping ground.
Set a weekly reset, not a heroic clean.
Five minutes on a Sunday: open each main cupboard, face labels forwards, group like with like, pull anything clearly past its date. You’re not deep‑cleaning; you’re keeping order from slipping.
Let everyday items be easy, not aesthetic.
Plates, glasses, cereal - these live at arm’s height, near the dishwasher if you have one. Instagram‑worthy jars belong after function is sorted, not instead of it.

A small map of white space in action

White‑space move	What changes in daily life	Why it helps
One empty cupboard	Overflow dishes, shopping and projects have a clear “visitor” spot	Stops other cupboards from silently swelling
70–80% full shelves	You see what you own at a glance	Reduces duplicate buying and last‑minute scrabbling
Weekly five‑minute reset	Small nudges replace big clean‑outs	Maintains order with less effort and drama

How to handle pushback from partners, kids and your own brain

Not everyone loves the idea of “wasting” a cupboard. Sometimes that resistance lives in the same body that wants a calmer home.

We’ve all had that moment when we swear we’ll keep the kitchen clear this time, then say yes to a free glass, the spare lasagne dish, the set of travel mugs from a work event. Stuff is social; it arrives with stories attached.

A few tactics organisers lean on:

Explain the job, not the theory.
“This cupboard is our emergency overflow so the rest of the kitchen doesn’t get messy,” makes more sense to a partner or child than “I’m creating white space.”
Offer a trade.
Keep one lower drawer as the kids’ “anything drawer” for plastic plates and their favourite mugs, in exchange for leaving the empty cupboard alone.
Run a 30‑day experiment.
Frame it as a trial: “Let’s keep this one empty for a month and see if it makes mornings easier.” People are more open to experiments than permanent change.
Notice the wins out loud.
Say, “I’m glad we had that empty cupboard” when you host friends, batch‑cook for the freezer, or stash the bulky air fryer someone lends you. Praise anchors habits.

Your brain may still itch to fill a gap because scarcity feels uncomfortable. That’s normal. Over time, the quiet of an empty space starts to feel like a luxury you don’t want to give up.

Where to start this weekend

You don’t have to reorganise the whole kitchen to try white space. Pick a tiny version that fits into a normal day.

Clear one shelf and declare it “on‑purpose empty”.
Move three rarely used gadgets to a labelled box in a wardrobe.
Set a timer for ten minutes and edit just the mug collection until it fits one shelf with room to slide them, not cram them.

You’ll know it’s working when you open a cupboard and nothing falls out, physically or mentally. The kettle clicks on, your hand reaches in, and instead of a small avalanche you get a small moment of quiet.

That’s what white space buys you: not a perfect kitchen, but a kitchen that finally has room for you.