How to Effectively Organize your Kitchen
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
Do you sometimes have a hard time getting your kitchen to stay orderly? Are you oftentimes stumbling around the kitchen looking for that spatula or roasting pan when you need it? If this is your problem, as it is with many others, you simply have to consider organizing your kitchen from the inside out. But what does that really mean?
Let’s start with your storage areas. Your kitchen cabinets and drawers are basically a finite amount of space in your kitchen. If you have a lot of cabinets, you are fortunate. But, chances are, you will fill them up no matter how many cabinets that you have. The first step to organizing your kitchen cabinets is to completely remove everything, cabinet by cabinet. Once you are now staring at all of the contents, it’s up to you to make some decisions. If it doesn’t belong in the kitchen, move it into the room in which it belongs. If it is a food item and it has expired, throw it out. If it is food that you will never eat, there are plenty of food shelters that would love to have it. If you take a realistic look at the contents of your cabinets you might find that you can open up a lot of needed space.
Before you put everything back into your cabinets, there are a few kitchen organization ideas that you could implement. Cabinet organizers will tend to keep the contents of your cabinet in its own place and, as a result, will allow you to find those contents when needed. A turntable which is a spinning surface with single or multiple levels is a popular organizer to insert into your cabinets. The rotating action will give you free access to everything on each level without having to dig deep into the rear of the cabinet. Another organizer that works well in a kitchen cabinet is called a tiered organizer. If you think about stadium seating in a theater it is basically the same concept. Each row is above the other so that each level can see the screen. With a tiered organizer you can see all of the items in the final level because it is higher than the others. It just makes it a lot easier to find contents within the cabinets.
When it comes to your kitchen drawers, you can perform the exact same process by clearing out each drawer, sort the contents, insert some drawer organizers, and re-insert your kitchen utensils. Separating the kitchen utensils with organizers in lieu of a jumbled pile of utensils will simply make it easier for you to locate what you need.
Organizing your countertops is also important since this is the area in which you prepare meals every day. One way to add some style as well as some practicality is to utilize kitchen canister sets. They will allow you to store in decorative containers your most utilized dry goods. You won’t have to drag a bag of flour out of the closet or cabinet every time that you need it for your meal. One other storage solution for your countertops is a utensil holder. With a very small footprint, you can store many different utensils such as spatulas, serving spoons, or salad utensils in one or more containers on your island top or countertop.
It does take some diligence and good old-fashioned elbow grease to keep an orderly kitchen. Review the contents of your storage areas and use some organizers and containers to store your kitchen items. If you work hard at it, you can have that organized kitchen work space that you’ve always wanted!