7 Ways to Bring Usability Back to Your Kitchen

Walking into your kitchen you wonder to yourself, “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 just 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 than spend time making meals and eating at home. I am here to tell you that you can make the process of 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.

7 tips to make your kitchen more functional

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.  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:

In the kitchen, everything must have a home. 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.  Ask yourself, 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 that talks 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 with stuff it will get, and you will be able to control the clutter and what you are placing 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 that will help you manage your stuff.  Visit What to keep in your organized pantry post that 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. Compartmentalized your drawers with customized bins that fit each tool or type of tools.  The kitchen tools could be anything from a wooden spoon to a baking platter. These tools 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 tool with you to the store to see if the items will fit in your drawer organizer. 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 to be. 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

4 Things Well-Organized Cooks Always Do