#The Kitchen Design Decisions That Drive Our Readers Crazy

This kitchen violates not one but FOUR reader rules. Can you guess what they are?*

In my many years covering kitchen design and organization for The Kitchn, I've incited my fair share of reader outrage at some of the kitchen designs we've showcased on the site. From white subway tile — you love it or you hate it, and if you hate it, you really hate it — to rugs in the kitchen (cozy or a hazard?), some features just really rile readers up, but none quite as much as the following five.

1. Open kitchen shelving.

Your chief complaint: The dust! The grease! The grime! Ugh, everything must get so dirty. And it always looks messy and cluttered. Anyone who has open shelving clearly isn't a real cook, because if they were, they wouldn't be able to put up with all the maintenance. You hate it, you say, and would take your closed kitchen cabinets any day of the week — and Sundays, too.

As far as the extra cleaning, you probably use all those dishes and pans fairly often anyway, which means nothing's just sitting there gathering dust!

2. Spices stored out in the open.

Your chief complaint: Don't you know that spices degrade when they're exposed to heat and light? You should never store them near the stove, or over the stove, or on the stove. You should never store them in clear containers on a rack on your backsplash, or on the side of your fridge, or on the wall. Spices must be stored in dark bottles in a dark drawer or cabinet. If you can't do this, then you are not allowed to use spices, ever, and are hereby banned to the Land of Bland.

Why it's not always as bad as you think: First of all, you're not wrong: Spices can deteriorate if they're exposed over long periods to too much light or heat, and ideally should be stored in dark amber glass containers in a drawer or cupboard.

But honestly, sometimes you just need to store spices where you have room for them, and if that's on a magnetic rack behind your stove or on that one bit of wall space next to the fridge, so be it! You're not going to irrevocably ruin every spice grain by exposing it to a little bit of light and heat, especially if you use up and replenish those spices frequently.

3. Heavy appliances on high shelves.