The kitchen is the busiest but ironically, often least-appreciated spaces in the home. That’s partly because we view it as a work space where output is more important than presentation. Yet, making sure your kitchen is clean and organized is not just about making it aesthetically pleasing.
Organization enhances safety, maximizes usable space, simplifies cooking and minimizes unnecessary expenditure by preventing you from buying things that you already have. Let’s not forget the morale boost you get when you walk into a neat kitchen. Here are some practical tips to ensure your kitchen cabinets, drawers and pantry are perfectly organized.
1. Use Baskets to Corral Similar Items in Your Pantry
Bins and baskets are the quickest, easiest and best way to organize the food in your kitchen’s pantry. Organize the baskets by category such as breads, pasta, snacks, baked goods and so on.
To make things more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly, slap clear conspicuous labels on the baskets. That way, you can immediately see what you’re looking for during those times when you have to cook lunch or prepare dinner in a rush.
2. Put Everyday Utensils and Pantry Items at Eye-Level
The goal of organizing your kitchen is to make your life easier. So even the arrangement of items must be done with this in mind. Don’t place foods you don’t require on a daily basis far from view and reach. Instead, make sure everyday food sits in the middle of the pantry and at eye-level. Lesser-used items can go to the bottom or top shelves.
Similarly, keep your cooking tools and dishes in cabinets that are within easy reach. If you have to reach for food containers every evening after dinner to store leftovers, don’t keep them in the lower or upper cabinet but the center.
3. Store Grains and Baking Ingredients in Containers
Acquiring a set of matching containers goes a long way toward mitigating kitchen pantry chaos. Containers can typically hold more stuff than store-bought boxes. They also prevent messes and spills while keeping food fresh. The good thing is if you procure good quality containers, it’s something you might not need to do again for years.
Invest in a set of plastic containers or go for sleek glass. Fill them with everything from brown sugar to dried elbow noodles. If you aren’t a baking enthusiast, use the containers to store nuts, cereals or snack mixes.
4. Hang a Corkboard or Hooks Inside the Cabinet Door to Enhance Space
Getting your cabinet from an online store like bestonlinecabinets.com is a good first step in a kitchen do-over. Next, install adhesive hooks, peg boards, cork boards—use anything that works to enlarge your kitchen cabinet’s usable space without physically expanding it. It will also be a great way to free your countertops from clutter.
You can use these to store measuring cups, serving tools, dish towels, recipes and grocery lists. You could also make use of the kitchen cabinets’ outer edges for spice or kitchen utensil storage. The spices will be easy to see without the need to scramble through your cabinets.
5. Put Shelf Risers in Your Kitchen Cabinets
Shelf risers are the dirty little secret of doubling kitchen cabinet space in seconds. Use them to store twice as much plates, mugs, casserole dishes, baking pans or anything else you need.
6. Organize Utensils in Kitchen Drawers by Type of Cooking
All kitchen utensils aren’t created equal. You might think it’s smart to have all your spatulas staying in the same drawer. However, it’s far more efficient and easier to separate your utensils by the cooking they’re made for even if the utensils are of the same kind.
For instance, the huge metal spatula used for grilling should be in the same drawer as other grilling tools like a basting brush, tongs and a meat thermometer. Same goes for baking necessities. Have your silicone spatulas, wooden spoons, rolling pins, measuring cups and whisks in the same drawer.
And if you don’t think you have enough drawers for the different cooking categories, dividers serve the same purpose for drawers as baskets do for pantries. You can then use small bins and boxes to organize your items.
You might not pay much attention to neatness and order in your kitchen especially as long as you can easily and randomly throw everything behind closed drawers and cabinet doors. Out of sight is probably out of mind after all. While that may be convenient in the moment, you unnecessarily waste hours each year trying to locate and extract a single pan from an assortment of utensils haphazardly stacked on top of one another.
Even if you don’t have a large kitchen, applying these tips can work wonders in making your kitchen cabinet, drawer and pantry an asset and not an impediment to your cooking.
