An Organized Kitchen
by Jessica Forsyth

The kitchen is probably the most popular room in your home. It seems to be the easiest place to gather everyone in the family. However, because of its popularity, it can often become the most disorganized.

No one puts the same thing away in the same place in the same way. It is easy to let the trash can overflow because a kitchen seems to produce so much trash! Meals always need to be cooked, and dishes always need to be cleaned.

It may seem like an impossible task, but you really are capable of getting your kitchen organized. Just think of three things: function, convenience, and space. How do you use your kitchen? If you love to bake, it wouldn’t make sense for you to store your flour on the very top shelf of the pantry where you have to grab a step stool to get to it. If your version of baking includes throwing some prepackaged rolls in the oven, by all means put your flour in the hardest place to reach in your kitchen.

Everyone is different and everyone uses a kitchen in a slightly different way. Just make your kitchen personal and convenient for you.

Rules for a More Organized Kitchen Most kitchen rules are really no-brainers, but you’ll be surprised at how many you might be breaking. First, store items close to where they are used. Store your potholders close to the oven. Keep your knives near a cutting board. Keep commonly used spices next to the stove. Make sure items that are used the most are the most easily accessible. If you find yourself digging in a drawer for five minutes every time you need a wooden spoon, maybe it’s time to move your spoons out of the drawers and into a container next to your stove.

Also, items that are used together should be stored together. All your baking goods should be stored in the cupboard or pantry next to each other or in close proximity. You can waste a lot of time opening every cabinet in your kitchen to gather all of your supplies for one meal.

Alphabetizing can also be helpful. You might feel like you’re being a little over-the-top at first, but after digging through dozens of spices or filing through hundreds of recipes, you’ll find that alphabetizing is the way to go.

Cabinets and Pantries
When organizing your cupboards, always consider what you use most often. Low cabinets can be used to store things like pots, pans, and skillets that are used less frequently. Glasses and plates, which you frequently reach for throughout the day, should be stored at eye level.

There is a lot of space in your kitchen that you aren’t using or aren’t using to its greatest capacity. Shelves with wide intervals waste space. Consider buying or making smaller shelves to fit within the shelves already in place in your pantry or cabinets. If you build them, make them adjustable in order to accommodate your changing needs.

Also, place dividers in your narrower shelves to stores cookie sheets or trays. This will keep you from digging through the drawer under your oven to find your cookie sheets.

Use small attachable storage systems on the back of your cabinet doors or under your sink for storing lids, sponges, soaps, and cleaning brushes. Isn’t ironic that the place where you store all your cleaning supplies is the first place to get dirty? If you let your under sink storage get too unorganized, it’s easy to let the rest of your kitchen get the same way.  

Counters
Your number one objective with counter space is to keep it clutter-free, which is usually easier said than done.

Find other places like a drawer, pantry, or closet to store appliances that aren’t used everyday. If you need some of your appliances daily, but they take up a lot of space, see if they can be mounted to a wall. Many toaster ovens, microwaves, and electric can openers can be mounted just under the upper cabinet unit in a kitchen, clearing a large portion of counter space. Re-evaluate everything you keep on your counter. If you don’t use it on a daily basis, move it!

Drawers
It can be very easy to just pile everything into a drawer and pray you can actually close it. This, of course, doesn’t necessarily create an organized kitchen. When it comes to drawers, dividers are the key.

Cutlery trays are great for organizing more than just forks and spoons. Place one in your kitchen junk drawer to organize things like rubber bands, paperclips, tape, and pens and pencils. Also maximize drawer space by storing rectangular items like aluminum foil, plastic wrap, and wax paper in your drawers. These similarly shaped boxes can easily be stacked and organized.

If you have a lot of papers lying around the kitchen, consider converting one of your drawers into a filing cabinet so you can more easily keep track of things like recipes and warranties.

LDS Living Magazine