Are you dealing with lid chaos in your cupboard, a lack of storage space, and different assortments in every corner? We’re here to provide you with some tips and ideas on how to better organise your kitchen.
Where’s the right spice for the Thai curry, and weren’t the oven mitts right here yesterday? Yes, the kitchen can sometimes be truly chaotic. If this bothers you, we have practical kitchen hacks to put an end to the disorder.
Where to Start with Kitchen Organisation?! If you want to start from scratch, the first step should be to clear everything out. Everything. You can also take this opportunity to clean the insides of your cabinets. 😉 Here’s how to proceed initially:
- Sort through your food items, getting rid of anything that’s no longer edible.
- Organise your food by how often you use it and by the expiration date.
- Sort items by frequency of use, and decide what’s unnecessary and can go!
- For food and items still usable or edible but you won’t need or consume them anytime soon, consider donating them (e.g., to community fridges) or giving them to friends, family, or neighbours. washing up bowl
Organising Your Kitchen: Here’s What Matters! Creating Uniformity For a neat appearance in the kitchen, storage jars are particularly suitable. You can transfer everything into these jars, as even half-empty packets often leave a messy impression. It’s best to transfer these leftovers into storage jars straight away.
Make Use of Every Nook and Cranny There are many tools available to help you utilise even the smallest corners. These include:
- Lid holders
- Small shelves that can be inserted into cabinets, creating space for dishes and pots
- Stackable storage containers
- Hooks for mugs, either on an open shelf or inside a cabinet
- Wall organisers
Instead of a small shelf, you could also mount a drying rack inside the cabinet. This way, you’re making optimal use of the cabinet’s height.
Proper Sorting The rule is: anything you need often should be placed at the front or where it’s easily reachable. Everything else? It can go further back in the cabinets, even into those awkward corners at the very bottom and very back (or you could resort to one of the upcoming tricks…).
If you want to avoid any confusion with storage jars, label them accordingly (“Salt”, “Sugar”). You can cut out cooking instructions from the packaging and stick them to the back of the jar with a clear adhesive tape.
4 Tips and Tools for Keeping Things Tidy
- Dividers In deep drawers, lighter items can easily fall over. To prevent this, install dividers or alternatively use tension rods (actually for curtains 😉) that you can wedge in between! They’re also great for keeping cutting boards in check.
- Knife Block With a knife block, you have all the important cooking knives at the ready. A magnetic strip mounted on the wall also keeps things orderly.
- Rotating Shelves There are rotating or pull-out solutions available for many cabinets. Ideal for pots and pans!
- Rollable Utility Carts Is there a wasted space between your next cabinet and washing machine? Such gaps can be excellently filled with rollable carts for storing onions, storage containers, lids, etc.
The Challenge of Open Shelves Not everyone has enough kitchen cabinets to store everything. But even one or several open shelves can quickly look chaotic, though there are solutions for this as well.
- Use hooks to hang mugs in a sorted row instead of stacking them haphazardly.
- Get boxes and other large containers for storing utensils & Co.
- Use (uniform) storage jars here as well.
- For spices, you could get a spice carousel or a rotating plate (Tip: You can place the spices in a small tray and then on the rotating plate, so nothing falls out!).
