Noisy Cabinets Are the Worst
Unless you’re living the postmodern dream of a brand-new kitchen with space-age storage, you’re at least passingly familiar with the cacophony of a kitchen in use.
Someone grabbing a box of cereal from the pantry? BANG. Need a bowl for that delicious breakfast? KAPOW. What balanced breakfast is complete without a glass of refreshing orange juice? WAMMO. I hope you weren’t planning on sleeping in.
Sadly, the vast majority of homes and apartments constructed before roughly 2005 will have sorely ill-equipped cabinets to dampen noisy cabinets. The major contributing factor lies with the archaic hinges or drawer glides.
If this is your living situation, you may be seeing a therapist to cope with cabinet PTSD or simply have fabricated a fantasy world where those slams are the exhaust from rocket ships traveling to distant worlds.
Fortunately, there are simple solutions that don’t involve the realm of make-believe, which may yet dramatically improve your quality of life.
Sound Matters in the Kitchen
Outside of cleaning days, showers, and hair drying, the kitchen is, without much dispute, the loudest area of your home. Juicers and blenders, microwave dings, even the metallic tings of rooting through silverware: it’s a noise generator.
The path to a more peaceful life is not to consign oneself to the facts but to combat them with reasonable solutions. Everywhere you can reduce the sound output, it can bring you and your next-door neighbors greater peace of mind.
Methods for Reducing Sound
There are several approaches to managing the volume of your doors. Depending on whether you have European-style kitchen cabinets or traditional shaker-style cabinet doors, some routes may work better than others. We’ve compiled some essential tips, ranging from free changes in habits to more permanent budget solutions.
Rubber Mat Washing
Dishwashing or even cleaning up around the counter can be noisy. It also typically leads to a great deal of cabinet use—possibly at an inopportune time. The easiest solution by far (and most inexpensive) is to use either a rubber mat or even a dishwashing towel to store your washed items on. This way, things can get put away at a time when the shotgun blasts of cabinets closing will be less of a shock to anyone in a 5-mile radius.
Cork Inserts for Doors
Here is your second cheapest option to manage the noise problem. A small amount of cork cut out and applied to just inside the corner of your cabinet door can seriously help with the sound. You definitely want to keep the cork a bit small so that it doesn’t keep the cabinet doors way open even after shutting them. Too large of a “cork stop” on your pantry, for example, could leave you vulnerable to invasive rodents.
Soft Close Shaker or European Style Kitchen Cabinet Doors
This is really the optimal answer to the noise issues plaguing your house. Getting new pre-made or RTA kitchen cabinets fully equipped with soft-close doors and drawers can introduce a tranquil hush in your kitchen that you didn’t believe possible.
These inobtrusive hinges mitigate the speed of opening or closing the cabinets, totally handling the typical cabinet slam, which has been a way of life until now. Certainly, a solution that demands some budgeting is really the permanent path to a fix.
