Kitchen Organization 101

Lost when trying to find a strainer for your pasta? Clueless to where you good cream and sugar bowls are? Maybe you need to reorganize your kitchen. With a little time, effort, and a solid plan, you can have your kitchen reorganized in no time.

First, you will need to make sure you know where all of your space is. This might seem strange, but if you have a drawer or cabinet that is located in an odd position in the kitchen, you may not even remember that its there. This is often where people find kitchen utensils, plates, or bowls that they never use. Areas such as this can also become just a storage area for anything, including items that do not belong in the kitchen. Avoid using your kitchen as just a storage area.

Next, clear out all your cabinets. And I mean everything. Dump out the junk drawer, take out the good china you never use, and make sure that you take good inventory of what came out of your kitchen, because not all of it will be going back in.

The way to begin reorganizing your kitchen is to make separate piles of your kitchen gear. One pile should be designated for those dishes and utensils that your use every single day. These should be put back in your kitchen in the most convenient areas. And if the dishes look nice, you can always find a little counter space and try to make a display out of them. The kitchen items are not necessarily dishes or utensils (such as cleaning products and towels) can be put back in those hard to reach and awkward cabinets. This puts them out of the way of things that you eat off of, but still in this kitchen itself.

If there is something you are storing in kitchen cabinets that you never use or never intend to use, get rid of it. Even if it was a wedding gift, it's not good to you if you cannot get use out of it. You can donate it to charity, try to sell it in a yard sale, or find a friend who would get some use out of it.

Before putting anything back in the kitchen, take this time to do some cleaning that normally can't be done. Wipe out all of the cabinet shelves, sweep the crumbs out of the drawers, and do a careful inspection of the condition of the cabinets. If the shelves are scuffed or peeling somehow, this may be the time to cover it with shelf paper.

Once you start putting all of your dishes back into the kitchen, take the time to make a little list of what is in each cabinet. You can attach this list on the side of the cabinet door so that until you are used to the reorganization, you will know where you want everything to go.

Kitchen reorganization will probably take a few hours out of your day; though once it is done you will not have to do it again. If you are a person that needs to reorganize your whole house, this is the place to start.