Keeping your kitchen organised is crucial as it not only saves time and money but also facilitates cleaning. Gharpedia shares some pointers to help you organize your kitchen cabinets.
There’s a popular quote – A place for everything and everything in its place. This especially holds true when it comes to the warmest hub of your house which is the kitchen. A slight bit of slackness and you end up paying a heavy price. And when it comes to organizing the kitchen it is the cabinets which play a pivotal role.
Through this blog Gharpedia eases the tedious process of organizing your kitchen cabinets.
Why Should One Organize The Kitchen Cabinets?
Before we embark on the ‘Sojourn of Organizing Kitchen Cabinets’ let’s first understand the need and benefits of the same.
Well as we are all well-aware there are a multitude of items that one needs to store in the kitchen cabinets; add to this the variety of sizes, shapes and categories that they come in and you have a herculean challenge on your hands! But remember an organized kitchen will offer you a plethora of benefits –
- It will lead to a massive savings of money as you’ll have at your fingertips all the stuff that you possess which will save you from buying duplicate items.
- Then again with time being scarce in these days of work-from-home an organized kitchen saves on this valuable resource during multiple processes like – cooking, drawing up a list of groceries to buy, setting-up a weekly menu et al.
- It will ease the menial process of cleaning the kitchen as everything will have its dedicated storage space.
- It will give you a feel-good factor as relatives and friends will appreciate – how spick and span your kitchen looks; and how convenient it is to cook in your kitchen as all the tools are strategically placed.
Cues for Organizing Kitchen Cabinets
So now let’s get started on the actuals … simple and helpful tips on how to organize kitchen cabinets –
Step 1: Declutter Kitchen Cabinets
Even prior to opting for cabinet storage solutions or attempting to re-organize your existing kitchen it’s absolutely mandatory to declutter your kitchen cabinets. Here’s how you can go about this –
- Keep handy a wastepaper basket for dumping items which need to be thrown away; and a cardboard box for items that are in good shape but lying practically unused for donating to the needy.
- Remove everything from your kitchen cabinets.
- Carefully and detachedly vet each item and either dump it in the bin, place it in the donation box or retain it in the ‘keep pile’. Remember the golden rule – If you’ve not used it for the past 12 months it needs to either go into the dustbin or the donation box depending upon the condition it is in.
- Go and dump the trash in the community waste collection dump.
- Place the donation box in your attic for actioning in the future.
- Start sifting through your ‘keep pile’.
Step 2: Kitchen Cabinets Items Classification
This is the first step towards the actual organizing process. You need to classify the items from your ‘keep pile’ in sync with the way your household uses the kitchen – trust us this is totally subjective. A friendly word of counsel – when it comes to organizing kitchen cabinets ‘functionality’ should be your priority instead of ‘appearance’!
Start with segregating the food items from the cookware and then move on to sub-dividing these two groups. So say for example edible items can be broken up into – beverages, dry snacks, canned items, baking ingredients et al. While the cookware can be further segregated into cooking utensils, cutting boards, glasses and mugs, plates and bowls, pots and pans etc. We leave the nitty-gritties to you so long as you adhere to the golden rule of ascertaining that each subcategory is arranged together in the kitchen cabinets.
Step 3: Proper Allocation of Kitchen Cabinets Items
This is the most important step of the kitchen cabinet organizing project as it entails assigning items to the cabinets.
So prior to putting everything away take a deep breath and visualise how you use your kitchen. Organically you’ll need to place all the kitchen items as close to the place where you use them the maximum… so if need be go ahead and swap their earlier location. Say for example placing your spices in a cabinet nearer the cooking stove is more practical then decorating them in the pantry … this would save you trudging down to the pantry whenever you need them too! Keeping your baking tools and cabinets in a cabinet nearer the micro-wave makes more sense than placing them in a far-away locale!
Don’t stop here plan to the extremely minute detail! In other words within a cabinet also ensure that you are placing regularly-used items at reachable distance and lesser-used ones otherwise. Take for instance the mugs and wine glasses cabinet – while tea/coffee is consumed on a daily basis drinks on the other hand are reserved for special occasions; so instead of arranging both upfront it would be advisable to place the wine glasses behind the mugs. Replicate this approach for your daily dinnerware and that exclusive dinner set which you set aside for special occasions. Another pointer to keep in mind is that everything doesn’t need to be squeezed into your cabinets … a few items can also rest on the counter or the back runner.
A good question to ask here is with regards to placement of items in upper and lower cabinets. So let’s get you started on this too –
Items To Store In Upper Cabinets:
01. Food: The best place to store food is bang above your kitchen workstation i.e. the counter space that you normally make use of for preparing food. Why? Elementary Dear Watson … To facilitate access while whipping up meals!
02. Dinnerware: Glasses and dishes need to invariably go in a cabinet directly over your dishwasher or drying rack to ascertain that you are not breaking your back and scuttling back-and-forth like a rabbit to put away your daily crockery.
03. Recipe Books: For those home chefs whose kitchens are lifeless without their bible (cookbooks) placing them in a remote cabinet would be practical as they wouldn’t need to be accessed as frequently as other kitchen tools.
04. Storage Containers: These need to be placed exactly above the counter space that you use when you fill them.
Items To Store In Lower Cabinets:
01. Kitchen Appliances: Place your kitchen gadgets in the lower cabinets exactly below your main work area to facilitate easy access during the food preparation process. In case of appliances that you use on a daily basis – say a hand blender or a mini-food processor – try promoting them to your kitchen countertop or affixing them to your kitchen backdrop.
02. Pots, Pans, And Baking Sheets: While pots and pans need to definitely be placed in any lower cabinet close-by your cooking stove; baking sheets can go proximal to the oven. Further use space-saving hacks like inserting pots one inside the other; opting for a rack that fits in the cabinet to place pots and pans vertically etc.
03. Cutting Boards And Mixing Bowls: These need to go into a cabinet (lower of course) in close propinquity to the drying rack or dishwasher.
04. Cleaning Agents: Place your kitchen cleaning supplies (soap, liquid, detergent etc.) in a cabinet under the sink. For households with inquisitive toddlers or pets a child-proof lock on this cabinet is an absolute mandate! A word of counsel – in case the cabinet is multi-shelved then the cleaning agents need to go on the bottom-most shelf (to avoid a catastrophe in case any container leaks/spills); and needless to say food cannot go either on the same shelf or on the shelf below the one on which you have placed the cleaning supplies.
Step 4: Maintenance
Hey hang on…before you sit back and relax thinking that you are done once and for all with the herculean task of the ‘Kitchen Cabinet Organizing Project’ there’s more for you! The most difficult task of ensuring that every single person in your household (right from your maid to your mother-in-law) contributes towards keeping your kitchen cabinets organized.
A few pointers to help you in this are as mentioned below –
- Ascertain that all those who frequent the kitchen are well-aware of what goes where; go a step further from labelling containers and opt for pasting labels (containing list of items that go into that cabinet) on the inner side of the cabinet door.
- Strive to keep everything neat when you put it away. For instance, twirling food labels to ensure that they face the outer side; arranging dinnerware in sync with their size and type; placing knives with their sharp edge pointing inward et al … all these small but extremely significant moves can lend a tidy and safe quotient to your kitchen space.
- Keep checking food labels regularly to ascertain that you are not consuming edibles post their expiry.
- Last but definitely not the least … never keep the de-cluttering exercise to a once-in-a-blue moon affair! Schedule it twice a year – once before monsoon and once before the calendar year ends.
Do you realize now that all that a functional and savvy kitchen needs is well-organized kitchen cabinets …? Let us know in the comment section below what you think about organizing kitchen cabinet.
When a person cannot afford a kitchen remodel, there are some actions that may be taken to make an existing kitchen more appealing and well-organized. Many kitchen organising recommendations can be found on other websites; however, the following suggestions are essential for a good start –
Author Bio
Huta Raval – An English Literature and Journalism Topper, Huta Raval has graduated from the L D Arts College, Ahmedabad. Post serving for 23 years in the NBFC and Public Library Sectors her desire for ‘writing the unwritten’ brought her to the creative field of content writing. Her clientele comprises of NGOs, Blogging Platforms, Newspapers, Academic Institutions, et al.