Redesigning a small kitchen

Today I was thinking about my kitchen. It is a small kitchen where I can stand at the stove and reach into the fridge and grab something without moving. My cabinets were not made for the space and there is a lot of unusable space. I was thinking could a kitchen be cabinet free and use shelving instead? That would allow easy access to the things I need, and also be better use of space. One thing that I have thought about is would this be a good thing or a bad thing if I want to sell my house. Around here kitchens are somewhat small. I am thinking shelving would help with what is lacking in my small kitchen space and storage.

Some of my thoughts are:

Adding pegboard to the kitchen. I have seen this in Julia Child’s kitchen. But would this be better than having an upper cabinet? Also has anyone had good luck using pegboards in the kitchen?

What other ways are there to use space better than cabinets?

Shelves instead of upper cabinets are definitely a thing. “No uppers” can be a fashionable look, even.

One of the first things I did in my current kitchen was take all the upper cabinet doors off, so in effect my uppers are open shelves. 15 years later, the doors are still off 😀

What makes it practical or not is partly dust... how much do you get?... and partly access by kids and animals (we have neither).

I think it could work well and shouldn't adversely affect your resale value. If anything, a more efficient and attrarctive kitchen will add to the house's value. I love open shelves to replace upper cabinets.

Except yes, as Kevin said, dust is an issue with open shelves, and with hanging things from pegboard or an IKEA style rack. Everything needs dusting more often. Well, unless you're like me. Stuff gets dusted when I need to use it. Yeah, I'm THAT homemaker!

I don't like open shelves in a kitchen, everything gets greasy in them and then the dust sticks to everything meaning it takes soap and water to dust! To me they always look untidy especially in a small space (I loath clutter). We have a mixture there's some open space directly above the cooker which I use for cooking sauces, and some over on the other side that is used for the daily use crockery, but there's also lots of cupboards.

Peg boards can hold awkward items that refuse to stack in the cupboard nicely, but they only really look nice if you have nice saucepans/utensils if you have the mishmash of second hand and inherited stuff I have it looks pretty bad.

I definitely prefer kitchen cabinets over open shelves, but I know all about poor design and wasted space. In fact, I'm annoyed by how much wasted space there is in so many kitchens, particularly considering the cost and the materials used.

Things I find more practical:
1. Wider cupboards rather than narrow - more usable shelf space.
2. Larger variety - one kitchen had an extra-deep cabinet over the fridge than held trays/cookie sheets on the first level and all sorts of light weight rarely used items higher up.
3. Lower cabinets are either "only cupboards" or "banks of drawers". The common drawer at the top and cupboard under are harder to see into and harder to reach into. Banks of drawers are expensive, but awesome!
4. Be willing to think outside the box. One kitchen I renovated, I put extra wide single cupboard doors in two locations because ergonomically, it allowed me to open the door away from the traffic pattern rather than two smaller doors, one into the traffic pattern and one away. In fact I got so frustrated at a friend's house having to deal with a lower cupboard with this issue, that I convinced them to buy a pair of hinges, and hinged the two doors together so they're now like a bi-fold door that opens towards the wall and away from where I'm trying to stand to access things. They were thrilled with the result! It was dead easy to do!

That said, I do have one pair of friends that avoided a chunk of this problem by carefully hunting for antique drawer and cabinet units and used those instead of buying fitted cabinetry and it worked not too badly.

If you want serious help, I'd suggest you take some picture and post them along with measurements.