If you have an RV, you know first hand the challenge of keeping all of your belongings organized and stowed in your cabinets. But, there’s a huge problem. RV cabinet sizes are not standard to those in houses. So it’s up to the RV owner to find kitchen cabinet storage solutions that will work for their individual motorhome or camper. To do so though, you need to make necessary modifications to make them fit. 

Think about this for a moment. You’re driving down the road in your motorhome or pulling your fifth wheel or travel trailer. Every bump, pothole and crack in the road is jarring not only your teeth but everything inside your RV.

Then, that uneasy feeling each time you open a cabinet door and everything falls out onto your head or hits the deck making a huge mess.

Frustrating, isn’t it?

We were frustrated too until we found a few different RV kitchen cabinet storage solutions that made our cabinet space more efficient AND safer to open!

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The Problem with RV Cabinets

Don’t you wish RV manufacturers would actually pay attention to what RV owners really want inside their motorhomes and towable?

What they fail to appreciate or embrace is space is a premium to begin with.

RV manufacturer engineers don’t take into account the sizes and dimensions of kitchen accessories, food storage containers, and small kitchen appliances.

They just haphazardly throw up some cabinets and call it a day. But then the end user has to deal with what they’re dealt.

The inside proportions of the cabinets are either too short, too tall, too deep, not deep enough or not enough shelves. In most cabinets in RVs, you can barely fit a box of cereal, olive oil bottle or even a tall dry spaghetti canister.

If only they would live in them for awhile to realize they need to design them better. Until that actually happens (like never?), it’s up to the RV owner to completely dismantle and modify them to be functional.

Some RVers are doing just that. However, that takes a ton of time, research and of course, you have to have the space and proper tools to build their own. The second best thing to tackle the problem is to look for reasonable modifications that will improve their function.

That’s exactly what we did to both of our fifth wheels; our Cyclone toy hauler and later, our luxury fifth wheel.

3 Genius RV Kitchen Cabinet Storage DIY Upgrades in Our Cyclone Toy Hauler

RV Kitchen Pantry Cabinet – Problem

We had a kitchen cabinet in our fifth wheel toy hauler that was such a pain in the butt to use.

It was tall, narrow and very deep with just two tall shelves; tall enough to put a huge bag of potato chips on. Each cabinet shelf measured about 8″ wide by 24″ tall.

And, the cabinet was also as deep as our bump-out slide (24″). I literally could stretch my entire arm into the cabinet without touching the back of the cabinet.

For it being a one of the only kitchen cabinets in the RV, it was totally useless except to jam in bags of chips and hamburger and hotdog buns which we rarely ate anyway.

It was too narrow for really any storage containers to fit either. And stack containers inside? Are you crazy? The shelf was so thin, it bowed at just the slightest weight set onto it.

We seriously had to figure out some sort of modification to make it useable.

After constantly hearing my constant grumbling, Dan just about had enough. To be honest, he was tired of it too.

So, he went straight to work to find a way to improve that kitchen pantry cabinet. After a few days of research and taking measurements, he did find an acceptable solution to better utilize the cabinet space.

RV Kitchen Pantry Cabinet – Solution

Because we’re well familiar with Rev-a-Shelf, a cabinet organizer company, he went right straight to their website to take a look a the options. 

He found exactly what he was looking for; knowing he’d still have to modify the cabinet’s interior to make it work. 

So, after careful measuring 10 times, Dan ordered ordered two (2) 448 Series Organizers for our toy hauler kitchen pantry cabinet directly from Rev-a-Shelf. However, now you can buy these cabinet organizers on Amazon.

Below is the schematic:

Again, it took a little extra modifying the inside of the cabinet.

First, he needed to reinforce the inside walls of the cabinet. Because as RV owners all know, cabinet boxes are just made with a thin luan panel.

He also had to mount wood blocks and heavy duty screws to the inside walls of the cabinet where the hardware slider mounts would attach to.

Once those two cabinet interior modifications were complete, he removed the entire cabinet door face from the hinges; also removing the hinges from the cabinet box as well as they weren’t going to be part of the new kitchen pantry organizer setup.

Then, he mounted both cabinet base organizers to the cabinet front.

When it came time to finish the install, it took both of us to finagle the entire cabinet ensemble into the slide brackets inside the cabinet.

After which, we both stood back and said to each other, ‘that’s how it should have been done!’

As you can see in our photos below, we can now store more than potato chips and hamburger buns!

I stored all of my dry stores as well as my plastic short canisters and tall canisters. I also put baskets on the bottom shelf to organize our dry food packets such as soup mixes, rice and noodle packages, and baking mixes.

And because these cabinet organizers are accessible from both sides meant I didn’t have to dig for anything. One of the great things about these organizers is the metal rails that keep everything intact; especially when rolling down the road!