Organizing your kitchen is a perfect project for January. You probably want to get organized, save money, and get or stay healthy, right? Getting your act together in the kitchen can help you do all three tout de suite. That’s French for what are you waiting for?
When your cabinets are organized inside, it’s much, much easier to keep the kitchen counters organized, too! Here’s the after shot to get you excited about this project.
Get Organized in Just 15 Minutes
The good news is that you can get organized just 15 minutes at a time. If it seems like a herculean task to organize your whole kitchen, just work on one cabinet at a time using the SORT and Succeed system.
The better news is that you don’t need to go buy anything to get organized. You probably already have everything you need. Let me show you what I mean.
Have a crazy snack drawer?
Plastic bags and clamshell boxes don’t stack very well, and they take up a lot of room. As a result, you probably have duplicates galore. If you can stand to do one extra step, combine the last little bits of duplicate bags and transfer your snacks to sustainable glass jars like the ones I use all the time (recycled spaghetti sauce jars). Turn them upside down inside the drawer so you can see the contents and not the lids. Don’t like that idea? Label the lids so you can ID your faves with just a glance.
Here’s another snack drawer, but with a different problem. Snacks are sharing space with beverages, vitamins, and appliances.
Here’s that same drawer after organizing. I moved the appliance and its parts to another spot, moved vitamins, combined a bunch of duplicate bags, and used plastic tubs that were destined for the recycle bin as containers. Snacks are IMPORTANT. Gotta give them space!
Plastic tubs, like the kind that lunchmeat comes in, are great for gathering small snacks and bars together. Label the bottom of the bin, so you know what to restock it with. Now, if only I could spell!
The corner cabinet is usually a kitchen hotspot. You’ve read somewhere that turntables can help, right?
The right-sized turntable is important to use the space fully. This is the one new item that we did buy. The 18″ lazy Susan (affiliate link) was worth the investment, but I also recommend looking into installing metal or wood turntables like these (affiliate link).
By the time you reduce the duplicates in the cabinets, you’ll find a lot more space! Combine duplicates or toss expired items.
We usually reach for tea to relax but…well…this isn’t very relaxing.
Now you can reach and find your favorite beverage in a snap. More importantly, you know when to restock, and don’t need to keep buying extras that you don’t have room for. This is where those step-risers really work out. You can see the tea boxes in the back easily. You probably already own step risers, but if you don’t, the expandable versions are my favorites.
As much as you can, use what you have, like rarely-used baking pans used to group tea, honey, and preserves in their own batches. That springform pan is still available for use, but for the 364 days of the year that you aren’t using it, it’s still working for you. (BTW, call me when you do use it. Cheesecake is my favorite!)
This is where those pans (from the picture above) used to be….
You don’t need to buy something to keep a cabinet like this organized. A little strategic stacking will do. This family didn’t use the glass pans very much, so we stacked those vertically in the back, and placed the muffin pans vertically up front, and everything fits perfectly. The missing element here isn’t another product; it’s just a minute of time to place things to they fit.
These organizing kitchen hacks I’m showing you here were photographed by the Philadelphia Inquirer not long ago. Are there any that you could use in your kitchen? Do you think you could use pans and organizers you already have to organize your kitchen?
I love celebrations, as you can see I’ll even celebrate organizing a cabinet! Christine Nass — one of my readers — gets to celebrate, too, because she’s the winner of the $700 travel gift certificate from our 21-Day Holiday Countdown that I collaborated on with David Zyla and Sophia Clark. I don’t do very many contests like this, but I’m thrilled that all of you participated. I hope you enjoyed the quick video tips. Let me know if you want more of that kind of thing.
If you need more kitchen organizing inspiration, now is the time to pick up the Organizing Your Kitchen with SORT and Succeed ebook online for instant inspiration. If you’d prefer a paperback, you can get all three SORT and Succeed books for just $30 (for a limited time).
Pin for later.
