Having a well organized kitchen is the dream of every housewife. After all, you can get a lot more cooking done a lot faster if your kitchen starts out clean and if all your cooking tools are easily accessible. It’s one thing to organize your kitchen and get it looking nice for a while. It’s another thing entirely to keep the kitchen organized for the long haul.
Since cabinets, drawers, and countertops make great places to store things but not necessarily to organize them, all your hard work can quickly go to waste if you don’t use clever hacks to turn these spaces into ‘organizational paradise. Here are a few ways to do it.
Hanging fruit basket
If you’re the type of person who likes to have a totally clear countertop, you’re not alone. Figuring out how to get that countertop totally clear, however, can be a bit of a challenge. Even if you are able to store your small appliances, deal with the unwanted echoes of the bureaucracy, and remove all traces of kitchen utensils, it still remains the essential of the kitchen everywhere: the fruit basket.
Since many fruits need light to ripen properly and remain appetizing, you can’t really hide a fruit basket away in a cabinet or pantry. However, you can utilize a hanging fruit basket to finally free up that last bit of counter space, once and for all. If you have your kitchen sink under a window, you can hang the basket near this window to allow the fruit to get enough natural light and to make it quick and easy to rinse the fruit when you are ready to eat them.
Retractable cookbook stand
Part of smart kitchen organization is using all those otherwise unused spaces – even the smallest. For example, that little lip under each of your upper cabinets is essentially wasted space, unless you use it to hide something that would otherwise be in the way.
Sure, you can use it to hide light fixtures like most people, or you can use it to install small retractable shelves that you can hide cookbooks on. Then, when it’s time to cook, you’ll always have your favorite recipes easily accessible and easy to read. If you have a few select cookbooks that you use most often, you can install one of these shelves under each of your cabinets to house your entire cookbook collection.
Freezer organization
Whether your freezer is above or below your refrigerator, keeping it organized can be a big challenge. Since there are typically fewer shelves than a refrigerator, food can tend to be pushed to the back and forgotten, only to be rediscovered during a major cleaning project as a frosty and disgusting mess. To avoid this food waste, you can utilize magazine holders as food separators and organizers.
Since most frozen foods, especially items such as frozen vegetables, French fries, and the like, can be flattened, you can flatten the packages they contain and insert them into the magazine racks. Then, you can organize the items into categories such as fruits, vegetables, and starches. This way, even if the items are stacked on top of each other, you will be able to easily see exactly what you have at any given time.
Wire rack shelves
One of the difficulties in organizing any kitchen is trying to understand how to keep small items, such as cooking utensils, spices, canned goods, and cleaning products, organized in large spaces such as cabinets and pantries. Especially in cabinets, the shelves tend to be too far apart to allow maximum use of space, ending up in disorganization, over time.
By using wire shelves of different sizes, you can customize the size of each shelf in your cabinets, allowing you to store more and keep the items you store better organized. Take, for example, your spice cabinet. Most spice containers are not tall enough to require typical shelf space. However, with a wire rack shelf, you can store twice as many spices and keep those spices more organized so you can find them more easily. A bonus tip here is to utilize these shelves in your refrigerator to compensate for a lack of pre-installed shelving units.
Hiding garbage
If you have a portable kitchen cart, chances are the lower shelves tend to be underutilized. Or, if you use them a lot, they are likely to suffer from a lot of disorganization. Instead of letting this space suffer, why not transform it to hide your kitchen rubbish bin?
If your cart is not already closed, you can use some simple decorative fabric to create a convenient hiding place for your waste container. If you previously had the trash can hidden in a kitchen cabinet, this will free up a lot of space in which you can now store a variety of other items. In addition, now you can easily transport your trash can where you need it, whenever you need it.
Organizing your kitchen doesn’t have to be difficult. The key is to understand how to use the items you have so you can organize them in ways that make them easily accessible. With a few ingenious hacks, you’ll be well on your way to having that organized kitchen you’ve always dreamed of.
My name is Jordan and I am an editor at DIYerHacks. I like to work on different projects that reuse and recycle materials. I love the feeling of working with my hands and making something out of nothing! When I’m not working on a project, I usually spend my city hanging with friends and trying to live my best life!
