Tame Kitchen Chaos: Organizing Your Cabinets

Many homeowners find that while their public spaces are usually neat and tidy, the areas behind closed doors, such as closets and cabinets, tend to spiral out of control rather quickly. One place that this tends to happen with frequency is the kitchen: Have you had the experience of opening a cabinet and having plastic dishes or worse, pots and pans, come clattering out? Here are some ways that you can tame the kitchen-cabinet-clutter monster:

Make Putting-Away Easy

Lazy susans, pull-out shelving and other retractable storage solutions go a long way in helping you to put items away quickly and easily. Have a system in place: Large pans go on the bottom and smaller pans on top, with lids placed on a rack, for example. Avoid stacking items when possible; this tends to create topples. Instead, invest in a kitchen organization system that allows you to have several shelves to hold all of your items.

Think About Where Each Item is Used

Keeping pots near the stove and plastic dishes for putting away leftovers near the refrigerator makes the most sense. Of course, sometimes your largest cabinets will be located in less convenient areas, but do the best you can. Usually larger, heavier items should be placed closer to the floor, but again, in some instances, you’ll need to compromise on that.

Group Food By Type

If you have a dedicated pantry to hold nonperishable foods, then that is the best solution, but sometimes you have no choice but to store food in your cabinets. Make it easy on yourself by keeping canned goods together, boxes stacked together and drinks together. It’s okay to stack boxes, but remember that falling cans may inflict damage on your floors, counters or feet, and that glass jars can break easily if they fall out. Keep this in mind when storing items.

Arti

If you have limited cabinet space in your kitchen, don’t be afraid to use other furniture or to store some items in other rooms. A hutch in your dining room can hold more than just fine china; fill it with pans, serving bowls, placemats or even canned foods if you need to. If you have the room for an armoire in your kitchen or dining room, use that as a pantry, or store surplus nonperishable food in bins under your bed or elsewhere in the home. There’s no law that says that kitchen items must be kept in the kitchen, after all!

When organizing your kitchen, it’s important to do what works for you. If you happen upon a system for storing kitchen items that you find easy to implement, then by all means, use it even if wouldn’t make sense to a visitor. If doing things the “right” way is cumbersome, then you won’t take the steps necessary for good organization, and chaos will reign, so figure out what works for your unique circumstances and do it.

Author Resource: Michelle Kulas writes about Preparing for Winter in Vancouver, BC, for Unique Storage and Organizers. Unique Storage and Organizers is an affordable and reliable Company for Vancover BC. Custom Closet