Your kitchen is often a gathering place for numerous occasions. It is also one of the rooms in your home that sees the most foot traffic. For this, and many other food sanitation reasons, keeping your kitchen clean should be a top priority. Now that spring has sprung, why not get a leg up and declutter this space? We’ve created a useful list to help you tackle kitchen clutter based on advice from leading home organizing professionals.
Declutter your Kitchen: Sort it Out
Before you give your kitchen storage a needed facelift, it’s important to first pull all items out of the cabinets and refrigerators and get to sorting.
Discard or donate things you can live without, such as an item you have more than one of or are not frequently utilized. Be ruthless. The majority of kitchens lack storage space, so it’s important to clear out areas for the items you love.
After you have completely cleared your cabinets, consider what to group together. Sort your baking and cooking items. Group your dishes based on what you eat on them. Sort important holiday entertaining pieces.
Consider labeling mason jars for easy-to-use storage of cooking utensils. By separating your utensils, you can avoid any accidents caused by last-minute digging through drawers.
Items used for cooking aren’t the only important kitchenware you’ll need to take into consideration. Papers like coupons, takeout menus, notepads, and other items that typically pile up on countertops should be sorted. Use a magnetic sorter box that hangs on the side of the refrigerator to store these types of papers. Just make sure each type has its own section in the sorter.
Use office items typically reserved for filing as a great resource for storing sports bottles. Nothing like opening up a cabinet and having a dozen bottles fall on your head. Use a magazine holder to easily file bottles on their side. You can also use stackable caddies to store on their side as well.
Declutter your Kitchen: Stow and Go
A big part of having an organized kitchen? Storing your ingredients properly. This helps to waste less food, and makes it easier to take an inventory prior to grocery shopping.
One ground rule that most professional organizers seem to agree on is, label everything. This is especially true when it comes to items stored in your freezer. Oh, and make sure they are stored outward.
Use clear containers to store your items. This will help streamline the various items inside of your cabinet. Group together items like small packages of salt and pepper, sauce, mixes, oatmeal, and hot cocoa envelopes.
Don’t keep any containers that don’t have matching lids. Store the lids in another large container so they all stay nicely together. Another option would be to store them on their sides in the cabinet on a wire rack.
The key to a tidy kitchen is staying away from any wasted space. Most kitchens come with an awkward, unusable space such between your fridge and the wall next to it. Build a roll-out pantry or sliding spice rack for these types of weird areas.
Try stackable storage such as wire racks. These come in different heights and widths and allow various sizes of plates to be stored neatly in the same cabinet.
Declutter your Kitchen: Look Upward
If you aren’t quite sure where to store an item, look up. If you have space above your cabinets, you can store things there.
This is especially true if you aren’t comfortable with open shelving at eye level. By limiting this type of space to the row of cabinets at the ceiling, you can still get the feel of this type of storage concept. Just less of the stress when it comes to keeping up with your mess.
Even if you are against the open-shelf concept, those upper, hard-to-reach spaces shouldn’t be overlooked. Consider investing in a sliding ladder, which adds both a practical and pretty value.
Also, consider a place to hang your pots and pans. A pot rack with an integrated light fixture takes advantage of vertical space and can add lighting to nice cooking space. This can be hung over an island or kitchen desk area for maximum effect.
Declutter your Kitchen: Hang Tight
Nothing is worse than having to sift through drawers to locate appropriate cooking tools. Instead, consider hanging up certain items to save space.
Tension rods, typically reserved for curtains, are incredibly handy when it comes to kitchen storage. You can use them for organizing cleaning bottles, creating an extra shelf, and even as a pantry divider.
Thanks to the shape and handles, mugs can take up plenty of valuable cabinet space. Luckily, and also thanks to their design, they make for great hanging items. Use hooks, nails, or other types of hardware to easily hang mugs by their handle for a quick caffeine fix and storage space free-up.
This also works for the oddly shaped cooking utensils in your cabinet and drawers, such as mixer blades. To save space, screw in a few small hooks inside of your cabinet.
Pegboards seem to be all the rage these days. It makes sense. Pegboards are a convenient way to make up for lacking cabinet space. You can even use them to store clunky items, such as pots and pans, by hanging them on your wall. Relatively inexpensive, these types of walls are great accessories for items you can easily hook.
Declutter your Kitchen: Final Thoughts
In the end, your own personal style will play a key role in how you choose to organize your kitchen. The main goal is to invest the time into getting the contents of your kitchen sorted in the best way to meet your needs. If you spend the time decluttering and organizing any space in your home, you will see great results for years to come.
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