What do you store in your kitchen island?

[tiapam]

We have a U shaped kitchen with a small, basically square island. It has two smallish drawers, right now one is a junk drawer and one is spices (near the stove, and that is working out well, much better than when they were in a cabinet). I would love to convert the junk drawer to something else some time, but the cabinets below are bothering me more right now. There are two doors and the cabinet does have a face frame so unfortunately there is a "post" in the middle of the opening, making it hard to store truly large things in there. Each side has a slide out shelf halfway down and the bottom is just the base shelf. Right now it is just a hodge podge. One slider does have the crockpot and my new mixing bowl *with* the hand mixer stored inside on a dish towel. So that leaves one more slider and the whole bottom, albeit divided in two. I don't have a stand mixer and the other baking supplies fit nicely in a corner base cabinet with lazy Susan.

Any ideas or what do you store in a space like this?

[jvs195]

My island is on wheels (someday it will be a built in) and it's between the dishwasher and fridge. Because it has no child locks on it I keep all the kid dishes and cups, plastic containers, bibs, dishtowels. Anything I don't mind them serving themselves with or playing with.

[wendibird22]

Ours sounds similar in design to yours. One drawer has oven mits and pot holders. The other drawer has dish towels. In the cabinet below are assorted small appliances: crockpot, blender, small chopper, george forman, waffle iron, quesadilla maker, air popper, immersion blender, apple peeler (the kind that mounts on the counter top), hand mixer, electric knife, coffee/spice grinder, nesco roaster, cookie press, and the bowls and accessories to my kitchen aid mixer.

The items we use most are on the top and bottom of the side that faces our sink and other cabinets (the side we stand at) and the less often used stuff is on the other side facing the fridge.

ETA: our corner cabinet doesn't have a lazy susan and we keep all our pots and pans in it since it is directly next to the stove. Our spices are in an upper cabinet next to the stove and assembled on a 3-step shelf thing that is supposed to help organize the spices.