Everything must have a home!
This is the trick to knowing exactly
what you own and being able to retrieve it easily. Designate areas that make
sense in your kitchen. I have all my pots and pans near the stove, glasses and
dishes near the dishwasher, baking supplies near the mixer, mugs near the
coffee machine.
Don’t go nuts trying to set things up
into zones that are recommended online. Just do what feels natural to you. It
will evolve over time for you. For example, I couldn’t figure out my leftover
containers. They were in 3 different places of my kitchen due to their sizes
and weights. I ended up keeping glass containers in one cabinet near the fridge
for leftovers and plastic containers near the sink for meal prepping vegetables.
This works for me!
Here are some organizing ideas:
-
Designate
areas of cabinets such as shelves (or even an entire cabinet) only for that
category of items: Don’t put your
immersion blender on top of the baking sheets. It should have its own home.
This way, you won’t need to dig through random items to get to a baking sheet.
Keep the gadgets in their own corner or shelf. You can also corral them
together in a dollar store bin or fancier clear container. I re-purposed some
of my old tupperwares for this.
- Heavy duty office supply organizers: I keep my frying pans and skillets on them for easy access, pot lids for easy sorting, glass/ceramic leftover containers, and baking sheets and cutting boards for easy access. This one is similar to the one I have.
- Add a shelf: This works great to create another storage level in a cabinet. I added one to house my mugs and another for small plates. I have this one.
- Over the cabinet door hooks: I added one to the inside of my cabinet where I keep my frying pans and skillets. I attached a chip clip to it to hold my splatter screens. They are easy to get to and easy to put away after washing. Much neater than my old way of throwing them in the cabinet and wresting them out from under a skillet. These are similar:
- Bookends: I used them to keep stacked freezer and sandwich bag boxes from falling over and to keep (some of) my cookbooks contained to their side of the shelf. These are the ones I have:
- Baskets: I bought a fancy-looking basket to hold my paperwork on the counter (no matter what you do, papers always end up in the kitchen). I also use a metal crate to hold the cookbooks I use regularly on the counter. Much neater than stacks of books or papers. This is the one I have:
- Countertop lazy Susan: This somehow keeps your oils and vinegars (or coffee items) that stay out on the counter from looking too cluttered. They seem to take on a smaller footprint of counter space and are easily accessible. This is one I have:
Are
there any kitchen organizing tools that you like to use? Let me know!
