How to organize kitchen cabinets.

Organizing items in kitchen cabinets is partly simple and straight forward and then some of it is complicated and challenging even for the most organized person. Plates, bowls, cups, glasses, and mugs are all very easy to sort out. Plates stack, bowls stack, cups and glasses can be sorted by size, mugs create their own group or can be in the same category as other dishes for drinking. Simple, yes?

But then there are the dreaded serving dishes, plastic food containers and their lids, pots, pans, vitamins, and other kitchen staples. Luckily there are more options now than ever before for keeping your things neat and organized.

Let’s begin with mixing bowls. The ideal way to keep them is to nest them within one another to save space. If you have more than can easily be nested, you may want to pare down.

Plastic & glass food containers are like rabbits. They multiply when you’re not looking. You may buy some. You may get some from take-out. You may receive gifts in them. You might buy food that comes with a re-usable container. After all this, you likely have more than you need and can easily organize.

In order to keep control of the containers, it is best to attack in this sequence:

1. Toss out or recycle the containers you haven’t used in 3 months. They’re not your favorites so you are not likely to miss them.
2. Match up all containers with lids. Toss out or recycle containers that have lost their lids or lids that have lost their container.
3. Pick your favorite 10 containers. You may keep more, but doing this will help you to choose which to discard when you run out of room.
4. Organizing:

If you have trouble finding lids, keep lids and containers together. This takes up a lot more space so you’ll have to pare down more, but it’s worth it to be able to find the pieces you need.

If you are ok separating the lids, try this:

• Sort containers into categories: round, square, and rectangular. Nest the round within round, square in square,and rectangular in rectangular.
• If they don’t nest or stack well, you may have to get a bin to put on the shelf and keep all the containers in a bin.
• Find a container larger than the lids and put all the lids inside, grouped in order of round, square, and rectangular.

5. Maintaining: Always put your items back where you found them. If they were on the bottom of a stack, put them back on bottom. If it had a lid, put the lid back on. It takes a few more seconds, but it is worth the effort. These little habits are  the things that separate the organized people from the people who know how to organize but are not.

 

Products that help:

Rubbermaid containers with easy find lids

 

 

 

 

Turntables help you find a lot of small items on one shelf. They’re great for spices, vitamins, oils, vinegars, etc.

The lower cabinets can be organized with various pot, pan, and lid organizers such as this pan organizer from Rubbermaid.

Allison Carter likes fun and funky organizing. She is a creative, right brainer and thinks it is more fun to organize if you love how your space looks. So she utilitzes color, shape, pattern and texture to keep herself and her stuff organized. Check out her web site at The Professional Organizer!