This Kitchen Layout Trick Makes My Kitchen 10 Times More Functional

I moved into a new apartment last summer, and I’m finally in the stage of move-in where it’s down to the details. We have the couch, TV, rugs, and lighting all figured out, but there are still some things that need upgrading.

Our kitchen is crying for attention—it has gray, faux-wood vinyl floors, bare white walls, and a narrow, alley-like build. It’s perfectly functional for two, but we do have to plan our storage carefully.

One thing that has always bothered me is that the fridge sits in the back left corner of the hall-like kitchen, but the door swings open to the right.

This means that, to access anything, the door has to be opened all the way; it creates an isolated square with the wall on one side and the fridge on two sides, and it closes off the rest of the kitchen when you do.

Oh well, nothing to be done in a rented apartment, right? Wrong.

How I Switched the Fridge Door Side

I was resigned to complaining about this for the rest of my stay at the apartment, until an uncomfortably topical video popped up on my Instagram page.

In it, a man explained that if your kitchen feels cramped (check) and the layout of your kitchen is off somehow (check check), then your fridge might be opening on the wrong side—bingo!

Then, he goes on to show how you can switch which side the door opens on with just a few changes to the door handle, some quick screwing and unscrewing, and voila! You have a whole new kitchen.

As soon as I got the chance, I took to unscrewing my fridge door. Just as the man in the video had said, it’s pretty easy to do yourself. And easier yet, our fridge doesn’t even have a handle.

I started by taking everything out of the fridge and freezer doors. Then, I unscrewed the top of the freezer door from the top of the fridge, and pulled it off the hinge connecting it to the fridge door.

I unscrewed the fridge door hinges from the bottom of the fridge and quickly moved it over to the opposite side to screw them back in.

I added the hinge connecting the fridge and freezer doors, popped the freezer door right back on top, and screwed its top back onto the fridge body.

Just like that, my alleyway kitchen was no longer an obstacle course of swinging doors, and my cat only gets herself stuck in the fridge for as long as she wants to since she’s not blocked in by the wall anymore.

What I Would Recommend to Others

Now, I did make it sound like it took all of five minutes (and for the man in the video, it actually did), but I did have a few issues along the way.

The first was that the plastic bolt covers on the top and bottom of the fridge had actually been super glued onto the body. With a lot of brute force, I managed to pry them loose, but a bit of Goo Gone or prep work would have gone a long way.

Secondly, I unscrewed all of these bolts by hand because I didn’t have the right hex key attachment for my power drill. This would have saved me a lot of sweat and frustration, but I had my mind set on a goal and didn’t want to put it off any longer.

I highly recommend using a power tool for this, especially if your fridge is brand new; I pride myself on decent upper body strength, but undoing industrially tightened bolts by hand is definitely pushing my upper limit.

Third, if possible, I’d recommend a second pair of hands. My roommate was supervising me for the beginning portion of this adventure, but eventually went to bed once I’d gotten both doors off—we figured I was in the clear.

While it was manageable, it would have been a lot easier to reattach both doors with just someone else there to hold them in place.

All in all, the whole process took me less than an hour, and I no longer have to worry about where my cat might be when I think about going to grab a snack. I’m so glad that I did it, and would highly recommend it to anyone else who feels their fridge door opens on the “wrong side.”