10 Storage Options For Caravan Kitchens

A caravan kitchen has roughly a quarter of the storage space of an average household kitchen, yet it needs to hold everything required to cook three meals a day for months on end. The secret isn’t owning less (though that helps); it’s organising what you have so that every centimetre of cupboard, drawer, and wall space pulls its weight.

These kitchen solutions are tried and tested by Big Lappers across Australia. Most cost under $30, all are available from major retailers, and every one of them solves a specific problem that makes daily caravan cooking smoother. The links below go to products we rate on Amazon Australia, plus the camping and hardware stores worth a look.

1. Non-Slip Shelf & Drawer Liners

This is the single most important storage purchase you’ll make. Non-slip liner (sold in rolls on Amazon, and at Bunnings, Kmart and most camping stores) stops everything in your cupboards and drawers from sliding around while you drive. Without it, every item in the kitchen shifts, rattles, and potentially breaks with every bump. Line every shelf and every drawer. It takes 30 minutes and costs $15 to $25 for enough to do the entire kitchen. You’ll wonder how anyone travels without it.

2. Stackable Airtight Containers

Decant everything from boxes, bags, and packets into airtight containers. Cereal, pasta, rice, flour, sugar, tea bags, biscuits, and snacks all go into containers. This saves enormous space (boxes are mostly air and wasted cardboard), prevents spills on rough roads, keeps food fresh longer, and makes pantry contents visible at a glance. The OXO Good Grips POP Container range (roughly $15 to $30 each, or better value as a set) is the gold standard: genuinely airtight, easy to open one-handed, and stack perfectly. Budget container sets, along with the ranges at Kmart and IKEA, work fine too; just ensure the lids seal properly.

3. Tension Rods Across Shelves

A simple spring-loaded tension rod placed across a shelf opening stops items falling forward when you open cupboard doors. This is particularly useful for the overhead cupboards where tins, bottles, and containers shift forward during driving and come tumbling out when you open the door. Available in multipacks on Amazon, and at Bunnings and discount stores, for around $5 to $15 each. Buy several.

4. Under-Shelf Baskets

Wire baskets that slide onto existing shelves create an extra storage layer underneath. They’re perfect for flat items (wraps, baking paper, zip-lock bags) or small items that get lost on deep shelves. Available on Amazon, and at Kmart and IKEA, for $5 to $15 each. A simple way to nearly double the usable layers in a tall cupboard.

5. Magnetic Knife Strip

A wall-mounted magnetic strip holds your knives securely (they won’t fly around in transit), frees up drawer space, and keeps blades accessible while cooking. A shorter 30cm strip suits a van better than a full-length one. Mount it on the splashback above the bench or inside a cupboard door. Much better than a knife block (takes up bench space) or loose in a drawer (dangerous and damages blades). Around $15 to $30 at Amazon or kitchen stores.

6. Over-Door Organisers

The inside of cupboard doors is wasted space in most caravans. Over-door wire baskets, along with stick-on hooks and small spice racks mounted on the inside of pantry doors, create storage for spice jars, foil and cling wrap, measuring spoons, and small utensils. Command strips and adhesive hooks work well if you don’t want to drill into doors. $5 to $20 per door depending on what you mount.

7. Collapsible Kitchen Gear

Collapsible versions of common kitchen items save remarkable amounts of space. A collapsible silicone colander ($10 to $20) goes from full-size to flat in seconds. Collapsible measuring cups, mixing bowls, and even kettles exist, and the camping brands do this well: the Sea to Summit X-Series bowls and colanders (from Snowys and Anaconda) collapse flat and take rough handling. The silicone versions are typically better quality than hard plastic. They don’t replace your primary cookware, but for items used occasionally, collapsible versions are brilliant space savers.

8. Drawer Organisers & Dividers

Cutlery and utensil drawers become a jumbled mess within days of travel without dividers. An adjustable bamboo drawer organiser ($10 to $25, also at Kmart or IKEA) keeps everything in its place. For deeper drawers that hold pots, pans, or containers, use expandable drawer dividers to keep items standing upright instead of stacking and shifting.

9. Spice Storage Solutions

Standard spice jars in a cupboard are a disaster in a caravan. They fall over, roll around, and smash into each other. The neatest fix is a magnetic spice tin set (small metal tins with magnetic backs that stick to a metal plate or range hood, around $45 to $60 for a set with labels). Other options: a narrow pull-out spice shelf fitted between cupboards, or simply decanting spices into small labelled ziplock bags stored flat in a container (zero space, zero rattling).

10. Fridge Organisation

Your caravan fridge is smaller than your home fridge and gets opened constantly. Clear stackable fridge bins keep categories separated (dairy, meat, veggies, condiments) and make it easy to find what you need without standing with the door open. They run around $30 to $45 for a multipack, or grab single bins from Kmart for a few dollars each. A fridge thermometer ($15 to $25) ensures your fridge is running at the right temperature, which is particularly important for 3-way fridges that can be less consistent than compressor models.

11. Stackable & Removable-Handle Cookware

Standard pots and pans are one of the worst offenders for wasted space, because the handles stop them nesting and jam every drawer they’re in. Removable-handle cookware fixes both problems at once. The Tefal Ingenio range is the one you’ll see in caravan kitchens everywhere: a single clip-on handle serves the whole set, the pots and pans stack neatly inside each other, and the pieces go from stovetop to oven to table. A full set collapses into the space one or two conventional pans would take. Stackable camping cookware sets do the same job if you want something more rugged. For our full rundown of what to buy, see our guide to the best caravan pots and pans.

12. The Right Appliances For How You Travel

Some of the biggest space savings come from not packing appliances you’ll never reach for. Before the air fryer, toaster, sandwich press, blender and coffee machine all move into the van, work out which ones genuinely suit the way you cook and how you’ll power them. An appliance that earns its spot off grid, where every watt comes from your batteries, is very different to one that only makes sense plugged into mains power at a caravan park. Match the appliances to how you actually cook and where you actually camp, and leave the rest at home. Our guide to what kitchen appliances to take on the big lap walks through the decision for each one.

13. An Over-Sink Board For Instant Bench

Bench space is the other thing you never have enough of, and your sink is the biggest patch of dead space to reclaim. A board cut to sit over the sink turns it into prep bench in seconds. Cut a curved notch around the tap so you can still reach the water while it’s in place, and add a lip or pegs underneath so it doesn’t slide. Plenty of Big Lappers make one from a cheap Kmart cutting board with a router run around the edge; ready-made over-sink boards are on Amazon, and Bunnings and Temu sell versions too. Just remember to lift it off before you travel, because a board that knocks the tap on has flooded more than one van.