I like to organize things. I'm pretty proud of the way our kitchen is shaping up. Also I'm linking this up to one my favorite blogs, Pure Style Home, as part of her "Pure Organization" project. Project No. 7 is "Declutter the Kitchen."
Once again, these are my rules for clutter:
- Analyze clutter. What are the problem areas?
- Create a system for each type of clutter. Everything needs a system.
- If you bring something into your house, it needs a home. A place. If it doesn't have a place, you need to make one or get rid of something else.
With that in mind, we took a look at all of our kitchen stuff. If you think about it, there's a lot of stuff in a kitchen that can build up and look cluttered. Appliances, tools, dishes, pots, pans, storage containers, food, cooking and baking supplies, spices, etc. Not to mention random other things like papers, mail, and so on. It was important to us that we had a place to toss everything for quick clean-up. Here's how we tackled it.
First, a quick before and after. Well, it's not a true before because this isn't our stuff. This is what the kitchen looked like when the previous owners lived here. I took this during the house inspection.
It's ok if you prefer the coziness of a more lived-in placed like this. But we prefer to have as little things on the counter as possible, more minamalist. It's easier to keep clean, easier to work, and easier to find things. Here's what the kitchen looks like now:
So where do we put all our junk? First, we used the storage we already had, the cabinets and drawers. We usually separate and organize our things by function. For example, here's the baking cabinet:
Here's the spice drawer:
Towels and pot holders:
Kitchen cleaning supplies (all over cleaning supplies live in the guest bedroom closet):
We have a deeper drawer for storage containers and the more shallow drawer above it is for lids.
Same with pots and lids:
First set of dishes (we have two full sets):
Utensils:
And so on. I won't post all of our drawers, but it's more of the same. Even so, we were short on some storage (as you can see, we don't like to cram our drawers full of things but prefer to keep them simple and organized). And so:
Storage solution No. 1 -- Textured boxes on top of the cabinetsI always read that experts say you should maximize your storage by looking up. In other words, use all of your vertical space. So that's what we did. We picked up 7 of these boxes with lids to put above our cabinets.
You wouldn't believe how much extra storage these things provide! Some of the things we store in them: Nalgene/water bottles, our infrequently used appliances (blender, toaster, mixer), unused lunch boxes, serving ware, and so on.
To find things quickly, I keep a list of what is in each box on the fridge. Like I said, this added a lot more storage for items we need to keep but don't use all that often. What about the stuff we do use a lot?
Storage solution No. 2 -- Pantry/buffetWhen we got married, we registered at Target. We received many a gift card from this lovely store, and we decided to save them for something good after we bought our house. After scoping out our kitchen situation, we decided we couldn't think of a better piece of furniture to buy than a pantry-buffet unit to add more kitchen storage. We lucked out because Target had a nice one that not only matched our wood color, but also had the same glass doors as our existing cabinets. And since our house has an addition, there was a perfect wall spot to put it.
The top looks like this:
And the bottom like this:
We love our pantry-buffet and store a lot of things there. To all our friends reading, if you gave us a Target gift card, this is what you bought us! Thank you. :)
Dishes on top (the other set):
And canned and boxed food on the bottom:
Cookbooks and wine in the middle:
And this thing even has 3 junk drawers. THREE!
Oh yeah, you might be wondering what this mysterious box is on top:
We also received a set of silverware for a wedding gift, but we didn't need the wooden box it came with since we keep our silverware in a drawer. Rather than getting rid of it, we use it to store our tea. We are big tea drinkers.
Ok I'm almost done, but there's one more thing we use for staying organized in the kitchen.
Storage solution No. 3 -- Use the wallsEven though I love art and decorative items, we only use our kitchen walls for hanging functional things. Like this magnetic knife rack:
Or this bulletin board to round up all our loose bits of paper, like business cards, wedding invites, phone numbers, etc.
And this dry erase board that hands on the fridge. Can't live without it.
We store our mail, papers, and related items in our mail storage area (
discussed here). You will notice that the boxes match the ones above our kitchen cabinets AND the smaller boxes in our pantry-buffet Cohesiveness is the name of the game.
And that's it! Whew.
Related articles:2010 is the year of home organization, if you don't recall. Here's what we've got so far:
And please check out
Pure Style Home: Pure Organization Project #7: Declutter the Kitchen for more posts by other bloggers about kitchen organization.
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