Organizing, De-cluttering, and Finding a Space for Everything in Your Kitchen

The kitchen is a busy place. In my house, it is one of the most used rooms in the house. Unfortunately, it can also be one of hte messiest rooms in the house if everyonejust leaves their stuff around or drops it off in the kitchen! There are things you can do to hlep make an organized kitchen so it is easy to work in!

Starting with the basics, you need to make sure all the dishes and pans and utensils have a place. If you have a drawer for your silverware, make sure that your silverware is in the drawer. Organize the silverware with a plastic sorting tray. If the drawer is big enough to contain other items as well, make sure that they have their own space. For example, corn cob holders can be placed in a plastic container with a lid in the drawer. I like to label such things as well. Your label can be as simple as a piece of masking tape and a permanent marker or it can be fancy like a computer printed label. Don't just toss extra stuff into the drawer, make sure that there is a place for it.

Pots and pans should all have their place too. Hopefully you have enough cabinet space to fit them all in. Nestle bigger and smaller pots when possible. If, however, you do not have enough space for all of the pots you have, the first thing you need to do is to decide if you actually use all that you own. If you do not, there may be some that you can get rid of. Needy families in your area could benefit or you can have a yard sale. If, after paring down, you still have more than you can fit, you may want to cnside hanging some of your pots. They sell pot hangers that you can install and hang your pots from the wall or ceiling. Or,, you can simply place a nail/hook in the wall and hang a pot or two.

Your pantry is another area that you will need to organize. The first thing to do is go through what you have in your pantry and get rid of all expired or unwanted foods. Believe it or not, I always find stuff that is excess when I do this because stuff gets moved to the back, forgotten about, or I bought several of something and then decided I didn't like it, etc. Once you have what you are going to keep, you should put the like things together. I sort the cans and have one space just for cans. Within the cans section, though, I separate by vegetables, fruits, tomato products, soups, etc so that each type of food has it's own area. Whenever possible, I label the areas so that others in the family can keep putting the items in the correct spots. For smaller items like spice packets and bottles of spices, Iuse baskets within my pantry. There are fancy baskets you can purchase or you can go to the dollar store and purchase a bunch of $1 baskets in a variety of sizes. Some even have lids which can be helpful for things like tea bags (I take the tea bags out of the cardboard box they come in and put them in a plastic container with lid. It keeps the tea fresher and besides, the cardboard box alwyas seems to get crushed and I have tea bags spilling all over the place!)

Paper clutter is another obstacle to overcome. Papers come from many different sources and they always seem to wind up in the kitchen. With a little planning and some pretty baskets, you can keep all the paper clutter organized and know where everything is at all times! The first thing you need to do is to make sure that every paper that comes into the kitchen gets immediately sorted and put away. One tool that I have in my kitchen is a wooden "mailbox" system for sorting mail. My piece has 4 slots: one for all bills, one for mail specifically for my husband andone for myself and the last is for things for the kids. All mail coming into my house gets immediately sorted. Junk mails goes right into the trash before it ever even hits the countertop. Oher mail gets put right into the mailbox system. Magazines get put into a pretty basket that is kept in the family room (next to the sofa for ease of reading). Sale circulars and other pertinent larger items get put into a basket in the kitchen (I throw out all sale circulars that we do not plan to use). Other papers that come into the house such as school papers and newspapers are also immediatly sorted and put into baskets or even magneted to the frig (if they are for upcoming events that I want to remember)

Organizing takes just a little bit of time but it is so worth it. Once you get things uncluttered, don't let up or it will all fall apart again. Just a little work occasionally will keep everything organized and you will be able to find whatever you need at any time!