The kitchen is just too small to hold all of our good intentions, and so most of my clients end up with kitchen things stored in other places like the basement or garage. Because baking pans and trays don’t get used all that often, it’s a challenge to keep them organized. My Facebook Group is focusing on organizing kitchens this month (you can join us), and so I wanted to show you a really great before-and-after in a kitchen storage space that happens to be in the basement.

This is the before. That upper cabinet floating over nothing? It was empty when we started, which was a good thing because you couldn’t really get to it. Those plastic bins in the foreground seemed like a good idea at the time, but really they were former toy bins that the homeowners were just trying to find a use for. In the process, they started blocking off parts of the room. Oops.

All the fun baking dishes and kitchen supplies were nearby on a shelf, but they were also mixed in with household items and gift wraps and ribbons.

After organizing? We could easily walk in the room, with all of the extra storage items removed. We even made arrangements to decommission the chest freezer, which the family wasn’t using but had plugged in. That’s a drain on the wallet!

The shelving all got re-organized, with kitchen gear on the far right, household maintenance items in the middle, and gift supplies on the far left unit.

All appliances and large pots are no up and off the floor! You know what I shared with you in my book, Organizing Your Kitchen with SORT and Succeed:

Few things feel better than and organized gift wrap closet.

But this…this cabinet above the freezer was the real star of the day. All it took was re-positioning the shelf to make space for the very largest platters plus three vertical kitchen tray organizers. I love these adjustable (and sturdy!) vertical racks. (affiliate link, see my disclosure page)

These adjustable bakeware organizers have become some of my favorite go-to kitchen organizing items. What I love about them is that we can set the dividers for skinny racks or even chunky 9×13 Pyrex pans.

Today’s post was a quickie, but I hope it inspires you to reset some shelves in your life and to think about filing instead of stacking your kitchen gear.