Easy Organization Solutions for Kitchens
Drawers, cabinets and pantries that will serve you well.
Oh, the kitchen. Where space is often at a premium, and the ability to organize makes you king. There’s a point every day where I find myself wishing for an extra drawer, a walk-in pantry, or cabinet shelving with enough vertical space to store the cereal boxes upright. But when you move into an old house, you usually have to make concessions (and sideways cereal boxes are our concession). An organized kitchen makes everything easier – and certainly makes cooking more enjoyable. So, what are my favorite products and tips that help give the kitchen two thumbs up?
Tips for Organizing in the Kitchen
Organizational strategies for organizing cooking spices, your knife collection, and inside your refrigerator.
Photo by: Emily Fazio ©2017
Emily Fazio, 2017
Keep reading to get inspired, and get your kitchen into its best shape ever.
Organize your silverware and knives
Knife storage is a must. A countertop knife block is nice if you need them at your fingertips, but you can also save counter space and tuck the knives into a drawer. Make a simple drawer knife corral similar to the one shown in the photo above by using a piece of untreated wood and a chop saw to create narrow spaces for each knife.
Silverware organizers are mandatory – and as much as we swoon for the store-bought styles in sleek stainless and non-slip silicone finishes, many of our favorites are DIY drawer dividers and organizers.
Sarah Fogle, 2016
Make the most of your refrigerator and freezer
Adding a condiment control center to our fridge made a big difference. The spinning tray not only keeps our most-used toppings organized in the fridge, but convenient to transport to and from the dining room table. (These turntables are also great in cabinets for spices, canned goods, and baking accessories.)
Tips for Organizing in the Kitchen
Organizational strategies for organizing cooking spices, your knife collection, and inside your refrigerator.
Photo by: Emily Fazio ©2017
Emily Fazio, 2017
Improve access to deep cabinets
When you’re on your knees and shoulder deep in your base cabinet hoping your fingertips find that 9x9 baking dish, remember that there are multiple solutions for those dark, disorderly spaces. First things first, install a motion-sensitive LED light strip. You can attach it directly to the inside of the cabinet, and every time you reach within you'll have the lighting you need to easily find what you need. (We have them in every closet in our house!)
Next, consider inserts to keep the deep cabinets orderly. ShelfGenie specializes in custom drawer inserts for existing cabinets. The inserts slide in and out with ease, allowing easier access and improving your ability to organize the cabinet space. The same drawer inserts can be used in a deep pantry cabinet, making it easier to manage your non-perishables like a pro.
In my last house, I even made my own sliding plastic container storage system to keep lids and containers in check. You can make your own using dowels, pegboard and drawer sliders, and customize the design to fit any cabinet.
10 Clever Ways to Keep Your Kitchen Organized
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Maximize vertical space
Convert a lower cabinet into a space for hanging pots and pans. Glideware manufactures cabinet organizers with built in hooks so that you can organize and hang your cookware for easy access, and to prevent scratches. Better yet? Convert that corner lazy Susan into a circling coral for your hanging pots and pans using Glideware's Not-So-Lazy Susan system.
Glideware, 2017
In a pantry, can racks effectively harness your soups, sodas, and other assorted canned foods. And they make your pantry feel as organized as the canned foods at the supermarket – it's absolutely satisfying.
Add utility behind unused drawer fronts
Tip out trays make use of a space usually ignored. Buy a simple kit and convert the panels in front of your sink to house narrow dishwashing gadgets like extra scrubbers, scrapers, and sponges.
Similarly, if you have a stovetop built into your counter, you can make use of the space beneath it by creating a custom fit drawer, which is perfect for spices and other items you commonly use while cooking. I toured a house that featured a custom drawer, and you can see photos of it here.
Improve small appliance storage
Our stand mixer is not only too tall to fit on the countertop beneath the upper cabinets, but storing it on an upper shelf in our small appliances cabinet effectively turns dinnertime into Kitchen Crossfit. Muscles! A heavy-duty mixer lift shelf like the below model from Rev-A-Shelf would enable me to use the stand mixer without ever having to lift it.
Rev-A-Shelf, 2017
Use open baskets and transparent storage containers
When you reach the point where you can’t open the cabinet without blockading an avalanche of snacks, open bins are the easiest way to win back control. Open bins serve us as an effortless catch-all for kid snacks – from snack packs for lunch boxes to assorted pieces of Halloween candy.
Transparent containers are also good for pantry storage when you want to see the contents stored within the canister. It works well for flour, sugar and pastas. For items with a greater risk of going stale, like cereals, coffee, and cookies, we like vacuum-sealed containers. The FoodSaver system, which we use to vacuum seal foods before freezing, also has an attachment that hooks to the top of our containers to extract air and it really does keep the contents fresh longer.
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