Investing time and energy into organising your kitchen is a worthwhile use of the relatively small amount of time and energy it will take. Here are some step-by-step tips to getting your kitchen organised.
Clear the cabinets
Pull everything out of every kitchen storage cabinet. Discard or donate items that are duplicates, not in regular use or broken. You will no doubt find items you don’t even remember you had. Think carefully before keeping them – if you haven’t missed them, do you really need them? Keep them only if you are sure you will find a use for them.
After you have identified what you want to keep, think of how best to group items. You might want to put all your baking items together in one cabinet, and group crockery based on how you use it rather than just putting all the plates together in one place regardless of how often they are used each year.
If you sort items based on how they are used it is easy to find items as and when you need them, and easier to instruct others to find things too. If you have items which only see use occasionally when entertaining or seasonally, consider finding somewhere else to store them. Storage space in most kitchens is very limited and having the dinner service you only use on special occasions in your kitchen cabinets might not be the best use of the available space.
Use vertical space
Place hooks underneath cabinets to hold mugs or hang a stemware rack for wine glasses. This will free up space in cabinets and on counter tops or shelves. Adhesive hooks can also be placed inside cabinet or pantry doors to hold measuring cups or items like oven mitts, or even accessories for different appliances.
Also consider using wall space or a ceiling rack to hang pots and pans, space you can use to hang something will free up flat space inside a cabinet.
Fridge weekly purge
If you have a weekly rubbish collection use the night before it to clean out the refrigerator each week. Get into the habit of seeing what food needs to be pitched and immediately throw it out so that it doesn’t end up sitting in your rubbish bin during the week causing smells. If you do this you will find your refrigerator houses only current items and will be less cluttered, making it easier to see what needs replacing come grocery list making time, and packing away groceries after shopping.
Keep trash bags near the trash can, and throw a stack of loose bags into the bottom of the can. When you pull out one bag, there is already another one right below it waiting to be used.
Plastic containers
There are a few options here and how you work best will determine which suits you better. You might decide to store containers and lids together to ensure you don’t lose valuable cabinet space housing lids without bottoms and vice versa, or, if you are able to keep track of your plastic containers well enough, consider storing all the lids in a larger container to keep them all in one place while you nest the plastic containers into each other to save space. Be careful of having too many plastic containers as they tend to be the items kitchen often become cluttered with. Having a good plan to deal with them will mean they get better use and prevent you having a situation where you both seem overrun by plastic containers, yet never can seem to find one when you need to store some leftovers!
Original article on Highway Mail
