11 Steps To Organize Your Kitchen Cabinets
Organizing your kitchen in a way that makes sense for your life will make a big difference in how you use the space and how much time you spend there. Here’s how to organize your kitchen cabinets so you love being in the kitchen!
1. Remove everything from your kitchen cabinets
To organize your kitchen cabinets, you’ll want to start by taking everything out of the drawers and cabinets – absolutely everything needs to come out.
You want to start with empty and clean places for everything. Don’t try to mix things up – it usually leads to a bigger mess than at the start.
2. Clean drawers and surfaces
Wipe down and sanitize all drawers, cabinets and shelves in your kitchen. Even a few crumbs in the bottom of a drawer can make it look rude and disorganized, so keep everything looking as clean as possible.
3. Take an inventory of everything you have
Get a good idea of what you have. Sort the items into categories, such as:
- Pots and pans
- Food storage containers
- Bowls and plates
- Mugs
- Cooking tools
- Cooking tools
- Cooking tools
- Small appliances (electric mixer, waffle iron, toaster, etc.)
- Spices
- Dry foods (cereals, pasta, oatmeal, etc.)
- Baking ingredients (flour, sugar, chocolate chips, grated coconut, etc.)
Everything arranged? Now you can see how much you have and how much of each item you will need to store.
4. Get rid of items you don’t need
More isn’t always better, especially when working with a limited amount of kitchen storage space. With everything sorted and you know exactly how much of everything you have, decide what you need and what you don’t need.
Over time, you might have collected various kitchen items and you might not realize how many you actually have. While it is nice to have a lot of pots and pans to make dinner as a group, you might find that you have three pots of the same size when realistically you only need them. of a. The same goes for everything else – you might have racked up 12 wooden spoons and only need two. And this collection of turkey pear? One will do – you get rid of the other two.
Get rid of things you haven’t used or have too much of. So setting everything up in your kitchen cabinets won’t give a Tetris game a run for its money.
5. Group similar items
Now that you’ve gotten rid of the extra stuff, you have less stuff to put in your kitchen. Wow!
Start by grouping similar items together and pairing them with cabinets and drawers based on their size and quantity. Pots and saucepans are bulky, so they will likely need a larger cabinet. The spice jars are small, so they can be stored in a smaller cabinet.
Keep similar items together in one place so they’re easy to find, and you won’t end up opening up every kitchen cabinet and drawer every time you need something.
6. Put open items in bins and containers.
When drawer space is at a premium, using bins to store items can make it easier to find what you need and prevent items from falling out of cabinets when you open them.
Transparent bins are the best because you can see exactly what’s inside. You can store all of your baking ingredients there – creating one for your sugars (regular sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, etc.) and one for chocolate chips (semi-sweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate, chocolate white, etc.).
Don’t forget to dedicate one or two bins for your snacks (granola bars, fruit snacks, etc.). Create bins for all the meaningful items to keep together.
You can also store dry foods in transparent, airtight containers. This lets you see how much of everything you have, and the containers are stackable, resealable, and won’t be broken or lost easily in your pantry. same Marie Kondo supports putting food in matching containers for the organization!
7. Use drawer organizers for utensils
Putting dividers and organizers in drawers will help keep things tidy and easy to find. Rather than a mess where it takes forever to dig up what you need, sort your usual utensils – forks, knives, and spoons, as well as larger kitchen utensils like ladles, kitchen spoons, and spatulas.
8. Match your food storage containers
It’s easy to throw all the food storage containers and lids in a cabinet once they’re clean, but it’s as old as time – when you need it, you end up rummaging through everything for a lid. assorted.
Put the lids on your food storage containers before putting them in the cabinet to make sure you find a matching container and lid whenever you need them. You can nest them together to save cabinet space while keeping the matches together.
No more digging and trying to put 12 lids on the same container before you find a match!
9. Keep frequently used items close at hand
Place all the items you use frequently in the most easily accessible and accessible places, and keep infrequently used items in more difficult to reach places.
It doesn’t make sense to keep the glasses you use every day on a tall, hard-to-reach shelf, nor to store the electric mixer that you use once a month in a cabinet at eye level right next to it. sink.
Organizing your kitchen should be meaningful to your life and what you use often.
10. Store items in places that make sense
Store things in the most convenient places! Keep your cooking oil and spices near the stove, as this is where you’ll use them the most. Put your utensils near the plates and bowls as they go together like peas in a pod. Place pots and pans near the stove, as they are always used on it.
11. Eliminate a garbage drawer
Many people have a sundries drawer in their kitchen, often referred to as the “random” or “trash” drawer. It turns into a black hole where you end up placing small items that you are too lazy to find the right place for and once you need that item you can’t remember where you put it.
This drawer defeats the purpose of organizing your kitchen – you should find everything quickly and easily without having to dig through a bunch of random things in a drawer. Don’t leave room for a garbage drawer in your kitchen at all!
Other kitchen cabinet organization tips
Here are some additional tips and ideas for organizing your kitchen cabinets.
- Use hooks inside cabinet doors to hang items like scrub brushes, pot lids and large spoons
- Use shelf risers to give yourself extra stacking space in cabinets
- Most cabinets have movable shelves, change the location of the shelves to accommodate the items you put in each cabinet
- Add a magnetic knife strip to the wall above where you normally chop fruits and vegetables so you can keep your favorite knives close at hand without taking up space in drawers
- Store your cutting boards and baking sheets vertically rather than horizontally – that way you can just slide the sheet you want to the side
- Label containers and bins, especially if they are opaque and not very transparent so you know what’s inside without having to check
- Add a lazy Susan to uncomfortable corner cabinets with a small opening, so you can store things like spices and oils without having to go far into the cabinet and you can see everything easily
- Limit your kitchen gadgets – yes the banana slicer looks cool and helps you slice a banana in five seconds instead of 30, but do you really need it? Buy gadgets sparingly to avoid clutter.
These aren’t necessary to keep your kitchen cabinets organized, but they can definitely help make your kitchen even more functional.
Staying organized takes discipline
Once you figure out how to organize your kitchen cabinets, your job isn’t completely done – you need to make sure they stay organized. This means putting everything back in its place every time you are done using it. It’s easy to break this habit, but once you do, your kitchen cabinets and drawers can get messy again.
Make a special effort to keep things in their place!
