Slide Out: 3 Genius Tips for Your Pull Out Cutting Board Drawer!

This “hidden” pull out cutting board drawer was another one of my kitchen fantasies! (Yes, I had a number of crazy kitchen fantasies which became reality!)

When I’m chopping a bunch of veggies, I usually fill up my cutting board fast. It takes extra time to stop chopping or dicing, go empty the tray into the garbage, and then continue. And time is of the essence when you have a hungry family (a.k.a. young, tired, hungry children) and yet don’t want to be rushing and chop your finger off.

What if I could just slide the odds and ends right into the pull-out trash can or compost bin below? Genius! Our cutting board slide out idea was born!

Pull Out Cutting Board Drawer

Avoid the Hole!

OK. Now let’s talk about some of the designs we’ve seen that put a hole right in the middle of the cutting board.

(Yes, this is important! “What NOT to do” is often just as important as knowing what to do!)

At first glance, the pull-out cutting board with hole looks kinda cool because it’s different! And it seems like, “Oh hey, just put your garbage right through the cutting board hole and it falls into the garbage!”

However, I have 3 problems with this:

PROBLEMS WITH a PULL OUT cutting board with hole

#1: Space.

If you put a hole in your pull out cutting board, you lose cutting board space! That big hole just took a big chunk out of your square inches of cutting board workspace!

PS: We made this quick video of our pull out cutting board in action! 🙂

PROBLEMS WITH a PULL OUT cutting board with hole

#2: Size.

What about items that are bigger than the hole?

A pull out cutting board with hole is only useful for things that actually fit through it, so you’re limited there as well. (Can you tell I don’t like limits if they’re avoidable? 🙂 )

PROBLEMS WITH a PULL OUT cutting board with hole

#3: Logic.

Someone needs to explain to me the logic behind why it’s smarter to put a hole right in the middle of the cutting board instead of the equally-simple and larger option of just pushing your cut items off the edge of the board and into the garbage below? Because it seems ridiculously unnecessary.

PS: You can get kitchen design & organization help HERE!

Our cutting board pull out drawer is a cinch to use! We just slide the items off the cutting board and they fall into the bin. Done and done!

There. I’m done with my mini-rant about why you should avoid those awful holes in your pull out cutting board. 🙂 Carry on!

Pull Out Cutting Board Drawer

DIY Pull Out Cutting Board Drawer Dimensions

Our custom pull out cutting board drawer is 22 3/4″ wide–that’s just the cutting board only. With the pull out cutting board hardware, it measures 23 3/8″.

Fully extended, it’s 20 3/4″. If you want to include the depth of the white door front attached to it, it’s 21 1/2″.

Wondering about the material? Our slide out cutting board drawer is made out of maple, and it’s 1 3/4″ thick.

The special drawer we had made below our slide out cutting board is 3 3/4″ tall. Let’s talk about that next!

UNDER CABINET PULL OUT Cutting Board Drawer

The Drawer Below Our Pull Out Cutting Board

In that pull out drawer (you can see it pictured below), we keep other useful kitchen tools like our mandoline and a grater kitchen tool. We’ve seen some people do a pull out knife drawer below here, which is fine, but we chose differently.

We decided we wanted our knife drawer to be right across from this slide out cutting board drawer, in the kitchen island across from it.

Why? Simple: we didn’t want to have to pull out the garbage drawer every time we needed a knife! (See below photo for an example of that double-pull we’d need to do to get in there every time. Nope, we’re not lazy–we’re smart! 🙂 We counted how many thousands of hours these kitchen hacks save you!)

You see, while this pull out cutting board drawer is AWESOME, we don’t use it for 100% of our cutting board needs. We still have other cutting boards that we’ll pull out and use to cut on the island. This is dependent on things like

• how many people are working in the kitchen (this is always more when people are visiting and want to help, or the kids are in the kitchen with us)
• what we’re cutting (certain items just need a different cutting board setup, you know?)
• whether what we’re cutting needs to be close to the garbage can or not (some items don’t have any leftovers that need to go into the garbage bin!)

So that’s why we use that special drawer below our pull out cutting board to store those items instead of our knives. It’s one of our strategies for making life run smoother!

PULL OUT Cutting Board Drawer hardware

What slide out cutting board hardware did we use?

Since we needed a custom pull out cutting board to fit in our drawer space, we purchased a butcher block cutting board. We then selected some full extension drawer slides with a good weight rating like these at 100 lbs to handle the weight of the board and all of the cutting. The cutting board was a little large for the space, so we just trimmed it down to fit and rounded the edges to match. We also drilled a hole in the bottom to create a handle for an easy pull out. To clean it, you can either wipe down or the drawer slide has release levers on each side that allow the cutting board to be removed and reinstalled without removing screws.

To see all the kitchen storage and organization hacks we’ve tried & tested, you’ll want to go here!

Our #1 recommendation, whether you’re remodeling or just want to work with what you already have in your kitchen, is THIS!

Or you can browse these popular kitchen posts:

1. How to save money on your kitchen!
2. Why we ripped out our new kitchen.
3. 5 ways we made our kitchen look bigger!
4. Where we hide our appliances.
5. 5 brilliant kitchen organization ideas that make life easier.
6. The 7 perks of our built in countertop drainboard!

➜ Our complete list of every single home project is viewable HERE!

*This post includes affiliate links to help support our site.