The kitchen is one of the most used rooms in your home. After all, you’re cooking meals, making snacks and entertaining. And in many homes, the kitchen also serves as the command center for keeping track of everyone’s schedules. No wonder keeping clutter under control is a challenge. I recently worked with a client to reign in the chaos in her kitchen.
This kitchen has loads of cupboards. We pulled everything out of every single one of them to make sure like items were kept together. Here’s a peek inside a few of them.
First up, the cupboard above the fridge.
You can see that cutting boards were stashed on top of the refrigerator which meant moving them out of the way to get inside the cupboard. We moved those to a new location. We decided this cupboard would be for little used appliances like a turkey roasting pan and the wok. This is also where she wanted to stash all of her paper goods. By using metal shelf risers, we practically doubled the useable space in this cupboard AND made things easier to access. And clearing the top of the fridge makes for a cleaner look.
Next up…Tupperware and baking!
Tupperware is the bane of every kitchen! I loved that my client already had a CD rack to hold lids. Once we matched lids with bottoms, we were able to toss the orphans. This is also the baking cupboard. And since they don’t bake very often, the top two shelves were the best storage option. We pulled canisters of flour, sugar and other essentials from several other cupboards to make sure everything baking related was all in one place.
On to the cookbooks!
You can see that this space held baking supplies, cookbooks, a veggie chopper, snacks and medicines. We sorted the cookbooks (donating several) and relocated a lot of the items in this cupboard to new homes. This space now holds cookbooks, cutting boards, meds and little used entertainment items.
Next we tackled the cabinet used to store extra food (think Costco trips!) and some entertaining items.
Again, many of the items in this cupboard were relocated so they were in the same place as like items. Once that was done, we decided to make this a place for party trays, pitchers and extra food items.
The spice drawer was next!
My client already had drawer organizers. The purpose is to keep things neatly separated. It wasn’t working in this case, as you can see. But after tossing out expired spices and grouping sweet and savory together, this drawer was transformed. There are many drawer organizers specifically designed for spices, but I like to use containers my clients already have on hand. And before you ask, yes, the spices are alphabetized. 🙂
Several of the cupboards serve as a pantry. This kitchen was already equipped with sliding shelf organizers. They make it easy to access things in deep spaces. It’s also nice to organize pantry shelves by category. Not only does it make it easy to find things when cooking, but it also saves time when making your grocery list. Here are the before and after pics of the snack, pasta and rice cupboard, as well as the breakfast, canned goods and sauce cupboard.
So there you have it! While we tackled every single cupboard, I wanted to share the most challenging ones in this particular kitchen. I hope this inspires you to organize your drawers and cabinets. And if you need help…you know who to call! 🙂