Kitchen Organization 101

Do you find yourself always looking for what you need in your kitchen and never knowing where it is?  Have items ever fallen out of the cupboard when you opened it?  Do you have to keep items on the countertops because you’ve run out of room in your cabinets?  If you have experienced any of these, then you know how frustrating it is coming home to a disorderly kitchen.  There are several steps you can take to minimize the mess in your kitchen and keep it organized. Kitchen organization couldn’t be easier with these tips!

1. Purging

One way you can decrease the amount of mess in your kitchen is by decreasing the amount of stuff.  Getting rid of items can be difficult, but there are ways to get through it.  Before you begin purging your kitchen of things you no longer need, get two empty storage bins or boxes ready to separate items that you wish to donate or trash.  This will help you not to make more messes as you go.  When you are going through any part of your house to get rid of items, it is often challenging to part with items.  You look at the clothes on the rack in your closet and only pull one or two items to get rid of.  You stare at the pantry shelves and don’t see anything you necessarily want to let go of.  We find that it is easier to get rid of more items if you touch each individual item and work with an empty space.  The best way to do this is by completely emptying the space you are cleaning before you go through your items.

The best way to accomplish this step in kitchen organization is by emptying all of the cabinets and drawers in your kitchen and put them on the kitchen table, counters, and even the floor.  When you do this, you see exactly how much stuff you really have.  When you are looking at all of your kitchen belongings all at once, you will be more likely to part with items you aren’t sure about because you feel like you own more stuff.  Don’t start sorting items until you’ve fully emptied all of the storage in your kitchen.

2. Sorting

When all of your cabinets and drawers are empty, you can start placing items back one at a time.  If you pick up an item and don’t feel a strong need for it, choose to let it go.  As you sort items, it is important to ask yourself if you need the item or if you simply desire to keep it.  If you don’t use the item, it is just taking up space in your home with no purpose.  Be honest with yourself when determining if the item has a purpose in your kitchen.  The donations and trash bins should be very useful during this stage.  When putting items back in your kitchen drawers and cupboards, keep like items together.  You should have usability in mind.  Items that you need regular access to should be in easily reachable places.  Items that you use less often can take up the space in the back of your storage areas.

3. Getting Rid of What You Don’t Want

This is the exciting part, the part where you free up room in your house.  Now that you’ve tediously spent time going through the contents of your kitchen, you have likely accumulated a lot of items in your bins.  Don’t let the items in those bins continue to take up space in your home, get rid of them.  If you set aside an entire weekend for this project, feel free to repeat this process in other areas of the house.  Fill those bins to the rim by emptying each closet, cubby, and room in the house.  Taking your unwanted stuff to a dump or donation center is liberating!  It feels so good to have your house back.  If you made this a house-wide project, you might have more junk than you can handle hauling off yourself.  If that’s the case, Junk Doctors can help you remove your junk in a breeze.  Just call us for a quote or click book now to get started.  If you aren’t sure if we accept your junk, see our list of accepted items.

4. Long Term Organization

While it’s relieving to have so much more space in your kitchen, it’s also intimidating to wonder how you are going to maintain it and keep it organized and orderly.  Moving forward, you will benefit greatly from taking the time throughout your week to keep your kitchen organization on track!  Here are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Clean it immediately after use.  Spending time cleaning when you are already tired from your day is probably the last thing you want to do.  But it is important to clean your small messes as you go so nothing accumulates.  After you make dinner, rinse the dishes you used right away rather than leaving them on the counter.
• Put it back.  This sounds obvious, but it can slip our mind sometimes.  When you wash dishes, don’t leave them on the drying rack or in the dishwasher.  Put them back in the cabinet to which they belong as soon as they’re clean.  Similarly, any other cooking supplies you used should never be left on the table or counter when you are finished with them.  If a bag of flour has a place in the pantry but sits on your counter for weeks on end, there is something wrong.  It only takes a moment to put everything back where it belongs.
• Don’t need it?  Don’t buy it.  Just because a blender is on sale doesn’t mean you should buy it.  Sometimes we are tempted to buy things because they are a good deal, but if we didn’t know we wanted it before we saw the item on sale, then we shouldn’t feel the need to buy it after.  Not only do we sometimes give in to sales, but we also give in to cute and sentimental.  You only need one coffee mug with your initial on it, no matter how much you think otherwise.

Get Started Today

Hopefully, these tips help you get your kitchen back in order!  With a little motivation, you can get this job done in no time.  If you don’t trust yourself to part with items you don’t need, recruit a friend to help you get rid of stuff.  And, remember that Junk Doctors is always available in the Triangle, Triad, and Charlotte areas if you need help removing items you no longer want from your home.