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A vertical dorm kitchen is one of THE best ways to utilize about 18″ of wall space in your dorm room.
Every time someone posts an image of a vertical dorm kitchen in our Dorm Shopping Recommendations Facebook group, the post is inundated with comments wondering where to find the various components. You’ll find all of those answers below.
Assuming you can have a dorm mini-fridge (check your dorm rules), the idea here is to go vertical with your ‘dorm mini kitchen’ in order to maximize storage. We’ll also show you how to steal a little more space on the sides of your ‘kitchen’.
Dorm rooms have such limited space, so if you’ll have room for a mini-fridge, using all of that space above it to create your own kitchen in your dorm room will be a big storage game changer.
Start by checking your dorm rules:
Our recommended mini fridges for dorm rooms if you can bring your own are below. Join our Dorm Shopping Recommendations & Deal Alerts Facebook group or follow us on Instagram to be notified when these (or any items in this article) go on sale.
Please check your dorm rules for microwaves as well.
Our recommended mini fridges for dorm rooms if you can bring your own are below.
There are only 2 options that I know of today that meet these dimensions. And no, you do not want to use an over-toilet shelving unit – we’ll explain why below.
Each of these options are 18″x24″, and all 5 shelves can be adjusted in 1″ increment. Only the heights and colors are different.
I’ve never seen a mini-fridge over 20″ wide, so you’ll place this unit with the wide side facing the dorm room and the 18″ side going from front to back over the fridge. Yes, the fridge will be a little bit deeper than 18″, BUT you do not want to have the shelving flush with the front as the doors will need room to swing. ✅
Well technically, you can as it will be wide enough. BUT, the shelves are about half as deep (9-10″) so you will lose about half of the storage space, and you won’t be able to hold a microwave or other appliances either. In addition, you won’t be able to adjust the shelves to meet your needs.
I love this set of 4 magnetic shelves and 1 paper towel holder SO much. The magnets are so strong that it takes 2 hands and a lot of pull to get them off of the fridge. This paper towel holder survived an entire school year with my son and his roommate pulling paper towels off like it was the Olympics, and it didn’t come off once.
You can put the shelves on the sides of the fridge and microwave, and they are great for holding small items like water bottles, coffee mugs, salt/pepper/spices, vitamins, popcorn oil, sugar, packets of oatmeal, small box of baggies, napkins, aluminum foil, hand sanitizer pump, dish soap, rolled up dish towels, etc.
This sturdy over-door 5-shelf organizer is another item that I ‘discovered’ when my second child went to college and was another $20ish so well spent. You can hang this off of one side of your shelving unit to add SO much storage space to your vertical dorm kitchen. Store plates and cutlery, extra snacks, baggies and foil, food storage containers, soooo many snacks, cleaning supplies,
Here are some of the items we love to use on our vertical kitchen:
Just do yourself a favor and bring this pack of 24 S-Hooks with you to dorm move-in day. Not only are they great to hang things off the side of your vertical kitchen, I know you will find uses for many of them including off of your bed rails, in your closet and in your bathroom if you have a private bathroom.
Did you get to this point and are thinking “my student will be on an unlimited meal plan, I don’t need all of this stuff.”
Yep, I’ve been there with those thoughts too, but I am here to tell you that now, after my 2 kids lived in dorms for a few years, they are CONSTANTLY cooking (well microwaving) and eating in their dorm rooms.
They don’t always make it to the dining hall for meals, and even if they do, they’re hungry again at 10pm when nothing is open. When it is pouring rain or snowing, they may not want to trudge to the dining hall. And just to give you a heads up, dining hall fatigue is REAL, and it can kick in after just a few months.
Setting them up with the ability to make a few meals or heat up leftovers goes a LONG way toward reducing their fast food expenses and late night Door Dash orders.
If you ship the shelving unit to home before you leave for college, it can be helpful to put the unit together once before it’s down to move-in week. What? Why? You can’t travel with it assembled!
That’s true, but doing a trial run at home and seeing how everything fits together can save a lot of time and hassle on an already stressful and emotional move-in day. It also gives you a chance to be sure all of the parts are in the box. While I’ve never heard of any missing parts for the 2 brands recommended above, you’d still rather know early than on move-in day.
After assembling, be sure to put ALL small parts into a Ziploc baggie for safe keeping. Tape that baggie to the legs and put it all back in the box.
Before thinking about specific items like this one, please be sure to review our Dorm Room Packing & Move-In Plan which walks you through what to do starting a few weeks out, how to pack the car and the 4-phase plan for setting up the dorm room.
When you get to Phase 2 in the move-in day plan above, lay out the components to put the shelving unit together. Be sure to pay attention to the round clips for the shelves as there is a Top and Bottom to those, and if you don’t have them going in the right direction, you’ll have a bit of a struggle.
We find the Honey Can Do shelving unit is even more stable if you place the first shelf as close to the floor as possible and place your mini-fridge on it. This is not necessary for the Suprima shelves as those have 3 stablizing bars to go around the sides and back of the shelving unit near the bottom.
Once your fridge is in place (be sure it is plugged directly into the wall or into a surge protected power strip), bring the next shelf down over the posts and place it just above the mini-fridge marking where your clips will go.
If you have a microwave, it makes sense to put it on this shelf.
Then bring the next shelf over the microwave.
Decide which bins or other appliances you want directly above, and place the next shelf in a place that makes it easy to move those bins on/off the shelf. We did this during our home trial run to be sure we had a good plan.
Continue until you place the top shelf.
If the student is heading to a school where students tend to move off-campus after one year in the dorm, you will likely still reuse this setup! Why? If they’re moving to an apartment or house with several roommates, it is quite common for students to bring their mini-fridge to their private bedroom to keep their own beverages and favorite foods.
My son even keeps his Keurig K-Mini in his bedroom on his vertical kitchen so he can have a cup before he showers without having to go ALL THE WAY to the kitchen. In his defense, there is really long hallway to the kitchen, but he is just not a morning person and needs his coffee! He keeps his coffee creamer in the fridge in his room too. He ended up leaving a couple of shelves at home and keeping his vertical kitchen a little less vertical in his apartment bedroom. He didn’t want to block the view of the TV from his desk. 🤦♀️
An average sized double dorm room is about 200 square feet. Going vertical with storage is KEY to creating space for two people’s bedroom, study area, closet, living room AND kitchen.
This vertical kitchen setup takes up all of 3 square feet of floorspace but gives you 18 square feet of vertical storage.
If you don’t have room for this in your dorm room, another option is this Fridge Bridge Dorm Kitchen.
We have so many images of these in so many dorm rooms from several years of move-in photos being shared in the Dorm Shopping Recommendations Facebook group, please join us there to see how they have creatively come to life!
Don’t forget to share this article with friends also heading to college soon. Thank you!
Affiliate Disclaimer: I only recommend products I do or would use myself. All opinions expressed are my own. I may receive a small commission, at no additional cost to you, for purchases made through the links in this post. Please see our full disclaimer for details.
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