Stellar Ways to Organize Your Kitchen Cabinets, Drawers & Pantry

Kitchen Cabinet Organizational Tip #1: The Great Purge

If you’re like most people, you have a difficult time organizing your kitchen cabinets. One reason is your kitchen is over-cluttered with way too much stuff. It’s filled with gadgets, pots, pans, bowls, Tupperware, utensils, and a million and one other things keeping the area way too cluttered and disorganized.

Some people fail to realize that they have certain items in their kitchens in duplicate, triplicate, or even quadruplicate. How does this happen? Well, the kitchen gets so cluttered that you cannot find what you’re looking for very easily so you assume that you do not have it.

As an example, let’s say you plan to make hamburgers for dinner for your family. You look through the kitchen cabinets to find your favorite serving plate and it’s nowhere in sight. You automatically assume that somebody lost, broke, or accidentally threw out the old one so you replace it with a new one. Meanwhile, if you dug a little deeper you would’ve found it buried at the bottom of one of your kitchen cabinets under the pots and pans.

This scenario happens more often than you’d think. So when you look around your kitchen, or the kitchen in just about any American home, you’ll see that many people have duplicates or more of average and every day utensils and appliances that they use often.

So, take time to empty out each and every one of your kitchen cabinets and lay everything out on the kitchen table, the floor, or another flat and easily visible surface. At this time, you are to pick up each and every one of your items and organize them into categories. Put all of your utensils in the same place. Put all of your plates in one place, and all of your glasses in a another. Follow this method for every item that you pull out of your cabinets.

Now that everything is organized into categories, physically look over and pick up each one of your items. If you have 40 small plates as an example, and you typically only use 10 of them, get rid of the additional 30 unneeded and unused extras. Save your favorite 10 small plates and donate the rest to your favorite charity.

Take the time to do this and remove items in each one of your categories. Once this is complete, you’ll see a major difference. You’ll have much less to put back in your kitchen cabinets even though you still have everything that you need.

Kitchen Cabinet Organizational Tip #2: Accessibility Is the Key to Kitchen Cabinet Happiness

Everybody has certain items that they use in their kitchen on a regular or even daily basis. And there are also items in your kitchen that you hardly ever use, but you still keep them because you may need these items a handful of times each year. So it definitely makes sense to have them on hand for those particular moments when they will be needed the most.

As far as putting your stuff back into your cabinets goes, it’s time to organize them with accessibility in mind. This is a lot easier than it sounds. Ultimately, you’d be wise to place the items you barely use in the back of your cabinets because keeping them toward the front of your cabinets will only put them in the way.

Instead, put your least used items in the back of your cabinets. Then begin putting the items you use a semi-regularly in the middle of your cabinets. And finally, put the items you use most often in the front of your cabinets for easy accessibility.

By organizing your kitchen cabinets this way, you are creating an efficient system to quickly and easily gain access to the kitchen accessories you use most often without any difficulty or unnecessary obstacles in your path.

Kitchen Drawer Organizational Tip #1: Use Expandable Drawer Dividers to Your Advantage

Before we dive into this tip, we are going to assume that you’ve completely cleared out all of your kitchen drawers and went through the de-cluttering process like we explained earlier. Because the first thing to do when organizing your kitchen drawers is to eliminate the clutter.

With that out of the way, we now recommend getting your hands on invaluable expandable drawer dividers. These trusty gizmos come in so handy and they are really inexpensive too, which is obviously an excellent bonus.

These dividers are so great because they let you sort the items in your kitchen drawers by category. Instead of dumping everything into the drawer like it’s a junk drawer, you can put one, two, or even three dividers in your drawer to keep everything separate.

On one side, you may place all of your large serving spoons. In another slot, you can place your chopping knives. And still in another slot, you can put your spatula, a can opener, and other miscellaneous items.

Using these handy drawer dividers will make your life so much easier. Instead of having to pull everything out of your drawer to get to the bottom just to find your favorite butter knife, you’ll be able to visibly see it right away because everything is divided and kept in perfect place.

Kitchen Drawer Organizational Tip #2: You Gotta Keep ‘Em Separated

You might be wondering, “keep what separated?” And the answer is simple… Keep all of your lids separated from their containers.

In all honesty, it’s much easier to store all of your containers by stacking them one on top of the other. If you try to store them with their lids on top, you’ll take up much needed space and this is a very inefficient way to keep your containers and lids stored.

On the other hand, if you store all of your containers by stacking them up, and then in a separate area you store all of your lids by stacking them together, you’ll have a very efficient system in your kitchen drawers.

By keeping your lids and containers separated and stacked, you’ll find it easy to grab a container and the corresponding lid quickly without finding too much clutter or too many obstacles in your path. These items will be easily accessible and very easy to use because you took the time to organize them to the best of your ability.

Kitchen Pantry Organizational Tip #1: Baskets Are All the Rage These Days

When you look in your kitchen pantry what do you see? Do you see cereal boxes tipped over and strewn all about? Or do you see packets of taco mix, juice boxes, and other miscellaneous odds and ends spread out and disorganized all over the place?

If you open your kitchen pantry and shutter at what you see, it’s definitely time to begin organizing this mess.

Repeating the same thing for a third time, you have to strip your kitchen pantry bare and sort everything that you typically keep stored in there. Are there duplicates that can be donated or discarded? We’re not necessarily talking about food because if you have duplicates of your favorite food items you obviously want to keep them and eat them at some point.

No, we’re talking about duplicate pots and pans, dishes, silverware, towels, or anything else you may keep stored in your pantry. If you have multiples of certain items that really aren’t needed, place them off to the side to give away to your adult children or one of your neighbors, or put them aside in a bag for your next trip to the local donation center.

Next, before you begin putting away all of your clutter, it’s time to go to Walmart or Target to pick up some handy-dandy baskets. These baskets are a godsend because they make it possible to keep your kitchen pantry really organized. You can place these baskets on your shelves and put similar items in each basket so you know exactly where everything is.

As an example, you can add a basket strictly for bread. Then add another basket for breakfast items like oatmeal packets or granola bars. Then maybe add a basket for candy if you like to keep candy around in your home. Have another basket for all of your seasonings and taco mixes. Ultimately, look through your stuff and place like-minded things in the same basket so you’ll know exactly where they are when you need them again.