An organised kitchen has the power to reduce stress and boost productivity. Check out these tips to get started.
Group your kitchen things into zones. Toss food items past their ‘best by date’; pare back your appliances by giving away those you don’t use and organising remaining items as close as possible to their zones.
Organize your pantry
You’ll also use bins and baskets on countertops to be able to see what you have in case you’re organising baking ingredients or snack items in a bin or basket together, but still keeping them on the countertop. Pay attention to where things are going so you can adjust your inventory.
Ideally, you should do the same with your pantry (vacuum out crumbs and wipe down grease marks, too). Use this opportunity to get rid of anything in the back of your pantry that is expired or duplicates things you don’t need.
Following a deep pantry clean, start by placing items you use daily (perhaps to make dinner or lunches) on your middle shelves next. Then move to the bottom shelves for seasonal products or those you use less often – canisters of sauces and vinegars, for example – and don’t forget to add a stackable lazy susan (with divided plates) for small pantry items like small canisters of sauces and vinegars. Finally, label baskets and containers so you can always easily tell where things are.
Organize your drawers
Keeping drawers neat and uncluttered can be hard work, especially since they are small. Many kitchen utensils can get lost if put together in one compartment.
Start with emptying and then sorting each drawer in it, one by one. This part can be dreadful, though you can clear shelf space and make everything nicer to find if you weed out the duplicate or rarely still-in-use items.
This will make ongoing ordered cleaning easier since identical objects go together on and under shelves. By clearing games off the table, doing the math is much simpler with organised tools: drawer dividers form boundaries around categories, and help contain separation of items that might slide when the spatula gets reached for again; handy interior trays can hold sets of knives or forks!
Organize your shelves
Kitchen organiser tools help you get what you need more easily. Group like things – such as utensils, baking supplies, etc – together, in different areas of your kitchen, to move more smoothly within the space and waste less time.
Also, kitchen organisers will allow for more vertical space, so more space will be gained on cabinets and shelves, freeing up room for more items. This seems especially helpful in small kitchens because vertical space would otherwise be wasted.
Make sure to clear out your cabinets entirely while you are doing so, and remove food items past their sell-by dates or donate or move items no longer meeting their dates. This will make it much easier to identify what you do and don’t need as you go about re-organising, and it will significantly shorten the amount of time you spend on this task. Having zones (ie, areas designated for food storage, food preparation, cleaning and washing up) will also aid this – items remain together in a logical location near where they are used in the kitchen.
Organize your worktops
You’ll whip up a meal more quickly, decrease visual temptations and, as a result, make cooking a much more enjoyable experience. Taking care of the drawers, cabinets and countertops takes more time and effort – but it’s worth it. Consistent work is required and might be better dealt with on a weekly or more frequent basis, depending on your lifestyle.
If kitchen organisation makes any sense, then similar things should be grouped together, categories ordered together by function, and storage areas planned holistically with things put within reach of one another – having the utensils you need close to the sink will take up some cabinet and counter space but will also free up your countertop from clutter between meal prep and dishwashing.
Pegboards are great for storing an array of tools that would benefit from being kept near the sink for easy access after washing, like cutting boards and knives. A magnetic knife holder also works well to both protect knife blades from damage and snags; there are many styles to suit every
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