Getting organized is great in any room of the home, but it can be especially important in the kitchen. Cooking already takes up a lot of time and preparation, so saving a few minutes (and a little stress) by not having to dig through your pots and pans cabinet or spice rack to find your next utensil or ingredient is well worthwhile. Installing cabinet organizers can make a huge difference in how you work and how long you spend in your kitchen instead of at the dinner table.
Door-Mounted Cabinet Organizers
Either because of how the shelves are divided or how deep they go, pantries rarely make full use of the space they take up. To counter this, try dividing things by height and need for easy access instead of by category (e.g. baking supplies, pastas), and then re-shelving your supplies accordingly. What you use most should go on shelves that are eye level, and what you use least or only for special occasions should go on the very top and very bottom shelves. If you don’t want to start moving around your existing setup, you can also mount extra shelves on the pantry door for smaller items so they don’t get pushed to the back where you can’t see them.
Swing Out Cabinet Organizers
Another way you can do this is with swing-out cabinets. A cabinet organizer of this type can be more effective because there is more room available on each shelf than with a mounted one, and you can see the entire shelf, which prevents your food from being pushed all the way to the back of the cabinet. This visibility comes at the cost of a little bit of shelf stability due to the moving parts, making it less ideal for glass jars and other pantry goods of a fragile nature.
Hideaway In-Cabinet Trashcan Storage
A quick way to better organize your kitchen and also improve its atmosphere is to use one of your cabinets for trash instead of shelving. Trash bins don’t need to stand free in your kitchen being unsightly and also smelling bad. If you confine it all to one space, the inevitable bad trash smell can be more tolerable behind a door until you have the time to take your trash to the curb.
Under-Sink Tipout Trays
You can also build storage into spaces that would otherwise be wasted. For example, there’s always a fake drawer right beneath your sink. Obviously, you can’t fit a full-length one there and have it butt into your hardware, but why dismiss the space entirely? A small, angled drawer can hold extra sponges and brushes for sink cleaning without being in the way.
Pullout Cabinet Organizer
The same wasted space idea can apply to cabinets. Pullout cabinets take advantage of that narrow area of wall that frames an oven or refrigerator that is too small for most uses. As long as you keep things that can be exposed to higher-than-room-temperature temperatures, you can shelve things according to your cooking method rather than wherever is available. A lot of getting organized in the kitchen is a matter of storage. Keeping things in order means you’ll save time while cooking because there are no surprises; you know exactly where your silverware is, where the dishware is and where to find that one corkscrew that manages to vanish every time you put it in a drawer.
