5 Kitchen Organizing Tips You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner
Updated: Aug. 06, 2019
The kitchen is the heart of any home but it can also be the messiest. You don’t need a degree to keep your kitchen organized—you just need a bit of time and these five tips.
Kitchen Organizing Tips: Hang Paper Bags
If you’re a natural-born hoarder but have no place to store all those brown paper bags you’ve brought home from the supermarket, clamp them together with an old pants hanger and hang them from a hook on the pantry or mudroom door.
Kitchen Organizing Tips: Organize Spices by Style of Cuisine
Arrange your spices in a low-sided, unleaded box (old cigar boxes work great) by type of cuisine, and whenever you’re cooking Italian food (or Mexican, German, French, Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern, or good old American), the appropriate spices will be together in one place. Cumin, oregano, cilantro, and red pepper? Sounds like Mexican. Tarragon, parsley, sorrel, bay? French. Label each box according to its nationality, and whenever you’re in the mood for that style of cuisine, your spice hunting will be kept to a minimum.
Here are eight Indian spices you should try using in everyday cooking.
Kitchen Organizing Tips: Repackage Dried Food in Plastic
If your cabinet space is cramped (and whose isn’t?) repackage dried food products. Food manufacturers seem to delight in filling containers only two-thirds (or even half) full, and as the food diminishes, the size of the box doesn’t. Gain precious room by transferring most of your dry food to see-through plastic containers (and then label and date them!). Flat rectangular containers work best, since they’re stackable and ideal for storing tea bags, dried beans, rice, pasta, and cereal.
Kitchen Organizing Tips: Number Your Containers
If you have lots of plastic containers, you know how frustrating it can be to match them to their lids. A simple solution? Label both container and lid with a number. It’s much easier to match a 2 with a 2 or a 5 with a 5 than repeatedly trying lids on for size.
Check out these nine ways to remove kitchen smells!
Kitchen Organizing Tips: Store Things Within Things
If your kitchen storage space is sparse, store items in containers you rarely use. One neglected container is the picnic cooler that sees use only in the warm months. Likewise, that stockpot in the back of the cabinet could hold napkins and other items bought in quantity at your local warehouse store.
