I’m excited to continue my series of spring cleaning and organizing with a room where I spend a lot of my time – the kitchen! Cooking is a great way to relax. Although, I’m not a natural at cooking I do love perfecting my favorite banana bread and some of my grandmother’s traditional recipes.
How To Organize Your Kitchen
Much like my advice for how to organize your closet, the first thing you need to do when you organize your kitchen is pull everything out of your cabinets. Most people have a lot of gadgets and random dishes or containers that haven’t been used in years. With that said, this is your opportunity to toss or donate anything you don’t use.
Take everything you’re going to keep, and group the like items together. Instead of keeping my mugs with glasses or stemware, I store them in the corner cabinet by my coffee pot along with my coffee filters, sugar, and fancy creamers. When I get up in the morning, I go right for my coffee cabinet and everything I need is right there in one place. In addition, I also store my hot chocolate in this cabinet when I don’t drink coffee.
Similarly, I keep all of my cooking and baking items in the cabinet nearest to the counter where I do most of my food prep. This eliminates having to walk back and forth across the kitchen to grab ingredients while I’m cooking. My glasses are in a cabinet by the sink and my stemware is near my wine fridge.
I like to keep my counters as clear as possible, so I have plenty of workspace. This is especially important for baking! To do this, I keep my larger appliances in a cabinet and pull them when the recipe calls for it.
If you are like me, you like to maximize extra storage in your kitchen. When I was a kid, I loved to watch Julia Child on PBS, and something I noticed about Julia’s kitchen is how she maximized space. Her strategy was to hang pots, pans, mugs, on her wall. You might not need to hang quite as many things as she did, but a rack for pots, a magnetic strip for cooking utensils, or hooks for mugs can help you free your cabinets and drawers.
I have drawer dividers for silverware and other items I keep in drawers. It’s so annoying to open up a drawer to look for a whisk and have to dig through a jumbled mess of tools to find that 1 item. Who can relate? Don’t fret because I found,drawer dividers that help prevent this frustration. Thank you drawer, dividers.
To organize the food in your kitchen, clear containers and baskets are your friend! I have sets I use for my pantry food and containers I use in my refrigerator. I also have some clear bins that look a little like drawers (complete with handles) that I use in my fridge to create more divided space.
Grocery shopping! It’s a huge time saver to prep your food when you bring it home from the grocery store. I immediately wash my fresh fruit and veggies and store them in clear containers. After a long day of work it’s easy to see what I have at a glance. For me, this is a simple step that will make your time in the kitchen a lot more fun.
Another important kitchen tip is something so simple, but for me, it really makes a HUGE difference. I always make myself clean the kitchen each night after dinner. As tempting as it can be to leave dishes in the sink to soak or tell yourself you will deal with the cooking mess in the morning, it’s always a little sad when you walk into a messy kitchen the next day.
Take the time to clean up as you cook and after every meal. Don’t forget to wipe down your counters and sink. You will be very happy when you walk into your shiny kitchen in the morning.
Do you have any kitchen organizing tips? Share them in the comments!
XOXO,
BLENDstyles