Walking into your kitchen, you wonder, "What should I make? Do I want to bake, cook, assemble, or make a salad?" Pondering over this, you glance at the clutter, get overwhelmed, and give up and go out to eat instead. Is this you? No judgment here. I am right there with you. You are not alone. Instead, many people go out to eat rather than spend time making meals and eating at home. I am here to tell you that you can make eating at home less overwhelming by taking some time and making your kitchen more usable. Here are tips to bring usability back to your kitchen and make it more enjoyable to prepare meals.
Jump to:
Clear out ALL cabinets and drawers
Revisit every drawer and cabinet in your kitchen even those spaces far below and above in the cabinets. Ask yourself if you are going to use these items. If no, get rid or give/donate them. If you decide to keep them, move them to an area that will remind you to use them. Some items can be stored in other areas of the home especially if you don't use them more than once a year.
Have zones for all your activities
If you like hot beverages, have a beverage station. (Learn how to make a beverage station by clicking here.) If you bake, create a section for baking supplies and prep. If you like to cook with herbs and spaces, have a space for all your herbs and spices (Affiliate Link). Create a prep area for prepping your meals. Whatever tasks you like to do in your kitchen, create your kitchen counters and cabinets spaces to support those tasks. Read more about zones in this post about how to create zones in your kitchen.
Everything has a place
Everything must have a home in the kitchen. When you think of your kitchen, can you see where everything goes when you close your eyes? To make a room purposeful, you must first determine that all the items in the room are supposed to be in the space. Are there items in the room that don't belong in the area? If you answer yes, remove them right away.
Make a Command Center
Command Centers are critical in the kitchen. It gives you a place in the kitchen that allows you to focus on the papers that need to be organized instead of placing all the documents in no particular order on the kitchen counter. This area holds a calendar, a place to file papers, a place for current papers, immediate papers, and reference paperwork. Visit this post about how to create an organized command center in your home.
Create Order in a Disorganized Junk Drawer
Make the smallest drawer in your kitchen the infamous junk drawer. The smaller the drawer, the less filled it will get, and you will be able to control the clutter and what you place in it. Purchase a junk drawer organizer
(affiliate) with lots of compartments to help manage the clutter. Read this post about 14 Essential items to keep in your junk drawer for assistance.
Pantry Transformation Made Easy
Create subsections in your pantry (Affiliate Link) that will help you manage your stuff. Visit What to keep in your organized pantry post,00 which shares details on the image below. Group like items together. Canned beans with other canned beans, soups with other soups, etc If you want to make a quick meal, have a few baskets that hold the ingredients for a particular weekly dish. Preparing these baskets at the beginning of the week will help with time management on those rushed evenings.
Go through the Unused Kitchen Tools in your drawers
Clear out any broken, worn, or not needed kitchen tools (Affiliate Link). Compartmentalized your drawers with customized bins that fit each tool or type of tools (Affiliate Link). The kitchen tools (Affiliate Link) could be anything from a wooden spoon to a baking platter (Affiliate Link). These tools (Affiliate Link) tend to accumulate over time and can make a space hard to keep organized when these areas are overly stuffed.
After clearing out the drawers, you may want to reorganize the area. Measure the width and length of your drawer. These measurements will help when finding the right bin for inside the drawer. With these measurements, take your largest and smallest kitchen tools (Affiliate Link) with you to the store to see if the items will fit in your drawer organizer (Affiliate Link). Then, buy a few of these bin sizes to adjust the width and length of the drawer measurement.
You are done. After completing these tips, your kitchen will be a proper and enjoyable place. No more takeout dinners for you. Do you have any tips to share? Please leave a comment below. I would love to hear from you.
Visit some of these articles below from other experts.
The 10 Commandments of a Clutter-Free Kitchen
Linda Samuels says
I've been working for a client this week and last on a kitchen and pantry reorganization. It's atypical for me to do this work in absentia, so it's been an exciting and fun challenge. It is very satisfying to create zones, make spaces work, organize like with like, and use organizing bins, drawer inserts, and racks to maximize space and minimize clutter. The Container Store has been my go-to resource.
Sarah Soboleski says
Since my kiddo started Kindergarten this year, I've been all about the command center! #toomanyschoolpapers
And of course, I had to pin this to my kitchen organizing board. 🙂
Seana Turner says
The kitchen is my FAVORITE room to organize for a couple of reasons. You use it all the time, so the investment pays immediate rewards. It tends to have fewer sentimental items, making it easier to shed. Many of the items in the kitchen have expiration dates, telling you to get rid of them. Setting up functional systems is totally possible, as you've outlined above. My biggest tip is to architects -- stop designing kitchens without pantries. They are so useful:)
Sabrina Quairoli says
I know, right! I had to be without a pantry for years until we designed our own kitchen.
Stacey Agin Murray says
Great advice, Sabrina. I have a bin in a lower kitchen cabinet called 'Kitchen Tools I Rarely Use.' It's filled with items I rarely use but still need to keep for holidays and seasonal occasions such as my apple corer, lobster cracker, or turkey baster. Instead of them taking up space it the drawer reserved for everyday cooking tools, they are grouped together away from my everyday tools and I always know where to find them. You're right--a usable, functional kitchen will make meal prep and cooking a less overwhelming experience.