Home Liquor Storage Ideas & Solutions

Here's lots of liquor storage ideas and solutions you can use in your own home, to keep all of the supplies and essentials of your stocked home bar.


I recently asked the readers of this blog where they kept their liquor, and I got all kinds of answers.

The most common places included in the refrigerator or freezer, somewhere in the kitchen, typically in a cabinet or on top of the refrigerator, or in the living room.

Wherever you keep your alcohol in your home, below I've got ideas and solutions you can use to keep it organized and accessible when you'd like it.

Liquor Storage Precautions You Need To Consider

I will mention, however, a word of caution before I start showing you ideas, and that caution is that you've got to seriously consider safety and who can access the alcohol stored in your home when deciding where you'll keep it.

The considerations for households with children and underage occupants or frequent guests will be different than for homes where everyone is of age and does not have any restrictions on their alcohol consumption.

If there are people in your home that are not allowed to consume alcohol I urge you to take precautions to keep it out of reach.

One such precaution might be to use a locked storage cabinet so that they cannot access it.

If you don't have one of those, or keep just a few bottles of alcohol, you may also want to consider special locks for the alcohol bottles, such as shown below. While not completely tamper resistant, any such tampering would be quite noticeable so it can be a good deterrent.

Liquor Bottle Lock {Referral Links}

Those additional precautions will limit some of the choices for storage I've shown below, but it may be necessary in your situation.

Storage Requirements For Hard Liquor & Other Alcoholic Beverages

If you've always stored your liquor in your refrigerator or freezer, I'm here to tell you, you don't have to unless you want to. Not even after it is opened.

Most hard liquor, with the exception of opened bottles of vermouth (which is actually a fortified wine) can be stored at room temperature both before it is opened, as well as after.

Vermouth, like other wines, does begin to oxidize at room temperature after it has been uncorked, and therefore must be kept refrigerated after opening.

So you will see many storage solutions and ideas below that are all kept at room temperature, since this works for this type of alcohol.

But as mentioned, opened wine needs to be refrigerated, as do many mixers. So if you've been seeing some of these out after opening, be safe and just chuck them and purchase a new mixer and store them properly after opening in the future!

Do Hard Spirits Have An Expiration Date?

Finally, here's something I wasn't aware of until I did research. Hard liquors actually do have a shelf life once opened.

That's because the alcohol does begin to evaporate and the chemical makeup of the hard spirits begins to deteriorate.

Therefore, once these bottles are open it is best if they are used within 8 months.

Now scroll on down for quite a few ideas for storing alcohol and liquor in your home.

Top photo of liquor wall rack is courtesy of Amazon.com, but does not appear to now be available for sale, second photo courtesy of theopie

Simple Solution: Store In Kitchen Cabinet

Several readers sent in photos to show me how they stored their hard spirits, and the most popular method was actually also one of the easiest -- store it in the kitchen.

The photo above is from a reader, Stephanie, who keeps her alcohol in the cabinet above her refrigerator.

That cabinet is typically a nice out of the way place that is harder to access, if you've got children in the home who need to have such items out of their reach.

You could also go a step further if you are concerned about someone getting into your liquor that should not, and do what a reader, Jennie did. As she explained, about the photo shown to the right, "I just put ours in a locking kitchen cabinet."

Finally, if you don't have a spare cabinet in your kitchen available, and you don't have some of the security concerns that occur in some homes, you could be like another reader, Shannon, who just keeps her booze on top of the refrigerator. You can see her photo below:

Liquor Cabinets Are A Classic Storage Solution For A Reason

Wine & Liquor Cabinets
{Click here to see liquor cabinets on Amazon}

Liquor cabinets of all varieties, large or small, are a classic storage solution because they work quite well.

I already showed you how you can keep your hard liquor in your kitchen cabinets, above, but if you'd like to keep it elsewhere in your home, such as in your living room, a liquor cabinet can help.

Some cabinets are lockable (but not all), and you may want to consider them for the safety reasons mentioned earlier in the article.

Unlike a home bar (shown below) which typically are set out so someone can stand behind them, many cabinets can either be mounted onto the wall, or are kept flush to the wall.

Some of them somewhat resemble home bars though, because although there is not space for one to stand behind them, they can have a flat surface to allow you and guests to mix drinks, and place drinks and other items while entertaining.

Here are some small and large liquor storage cabinets that are available on Amazon:

Wine & Liquor Cabinets {Referral Links}

Choose A Home Bar With Storage When You Can

Home Bar With Storage
{Click here to see bars on Amazon}

If you like to entertain, and also have a fair amount of alcohol to store, you may want to consider a home bar.

These can be the focal point of a room, which can be perfect for some, while others may not want to bring that much attention to this item in their homes, your call.

There are built in and custom options, of course, but there are also freestanding pieces of furniture which are designed for this purpose.

I suggest that when you're looking for a home bar that you consider what storage the furniture also has in it, to keep both the liquor itself and additional home bar supplies and equipment that can stay at room temperature.

Consider what alcohol you prefer, and whether the bottle types you have will fit well in the storage available.

Here are several home bars which are available on Amazon:

Home Bars {Referral Links}

A Bar Cart Can Provide More Moveable Alcohol Storage

Kitchen & Bar Serving Cart
{Click here to purchase on Amazon}
Finally, if you like to entertain, but the place in your home you like to do that entertaining can vary, you may want to consider a bar cart.

A cart is much like a liquor cabinet in that it can provide nice storage, but typically these carts have wheels so they are, at least in theory, movable.

Depending on how heavily you load your cart, the quality of the cart you choose, plus whether you've got carpeting, etc., this storage furniture may or may not be very easy to actually roll around.

No matter if it is easy to move or not, you always have to use caution when moving anything that is loaded up with typically glass bottles, and also glasses and tumblers as well. So just keep that in mind.

However, they can be worth using because they can provide a level of convenience for you and your guests that these other ideas just can't.

Here are some carts available on Amazon. You'll even note the globe bar, which is popular for concealing some of your liquor while still storing it in a common area.

Bar Carts {Referral Links}

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More Home Storage Solutions

I hope you enjoyed these ideas for liquor storage in your home.

There are even more ideas for storage and organizing on the site in the {A-Z} Storage Solutions & Ideas round up page. Go check it out if you'd like to see even more ideas.

In addition, if these ideas have inspired you to organize even more things in your home make sure to join the free 52 Week Organized Home Challenge I run on the site.

As the name implies each week we take on a brand new challenge, organizing either a room or type of item commonly found in the home, so that slowly but surely, over the course of the year, you've organized your entire home and have developed habits and skills along the way to keep it that way.

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