As the holidays of an especially home-centric year recede into the rearview mirror, we’re looking for fresh starts and clean slates, orderly cabinets, and uncluttered countertops. It’s a good time to pause, put down those battered baking pans, and have an honest look at kitchen organization. Completely reimagining the most used room in the household can be a daunting task, so we’ve broken it down for you in some easy-to-follow steps, drawing on expert advice from professional organizers.
1. Take Stock.
Any kitchen reorganization project has to start with a systematic unpacking of cabinets, drawers, and pantry shelves. In essence, take it all apart before you can put it back together. But don’t just toss everything in a jumble. Lay out piles by category and item type, says Christina DesAuguste, owner of The Organizing Company in Boulder, CO.
“Put all your pots and pans together, all your kitchen gadgets together, glassware, food storage, and dishes. Think of it almost as if you were going shopping in Target. How would you see things grouped together in the aisles?”
This method, she says, will show you what you have, including belongings you’ve forgotten about or multiples you might not even realize you own. Be warned: You will be surprised.
2. Sort it Out.
Once your kitchen goods have been categorized, it’s time to sift through them. Understanding that you might not want to keep everything and that you can put some items into storage, begin to look through each pile and ask yourself what must stay and what can go.
A good rule of thumb here is “Need it; Use it, Love it,” says Justin Mazurkewicz, owner of Clutter King in Houston Texas. “And of course, get rid of those expired foods!”
Need it items are food, shelter, hygiene, and medical supplies. Use it items are things you might use within a typical year’s time frame. Love it items are those things you truly cherish and/or have on display. As you go, create separate piles for storage, give away, donation, and disposal. Don’t worry if you don’t have Marie Kondo-esque clarity on the first try—it takes practice and it might take a few passes to truly declutter your space.
3. Zone Your Kitchen.
Congratulations! You’ve gotten through the two hardest steps! Now you can bag or box up your items that will no longer stay in your kitchen and set them aside. Your next task is to repopulate your kitchen, this time with a more functional approach. Think about how you use your space and start to assign items to cabinets and drawers accordingly.
“There might be a place where you cut, and another where you bake,” DesAuguste says. “That’s where you’d store your measuring cups and mixing bowls and other baking gadgets and pans. Ideally, you’ll keep all those things together so you’re not running all around the kitchen to get things that you’d want to use at the same time.”
The same principle applies elsewhere: store dishes and glassware near the dishwasher, pots, and pans and cooking utensils near the stove, and so on. That being said, if you have a good spot for glasses near your fridge and a better shelf for dishes near your dishwasher, don’t be afraid to store them separately. Your system has to work for your space and your own daily rhythm.
As you organize kitchen counters, try to leave as much workspace as possible. Keep only the small appliances that you use most often on the countertop. Store the rest in as accessible a spot as you can manage.
“You don’t have to use your knife block if short on counter space,” Mazurkewicz says.
That being said, there are no hard and fast rules. No matter what the magazines or Pinterest might say, your kitchen’s physical layout and the way you use it are the only parameters here. It’s okay to be creative and think outside the proverbial box. For instance, he says, you don’t need to keep a whole set of dishes if you don’t need them.
4. Everything but the Under the Kitchen Sink Organizer.
Only once you’ve gotten through the first three steps should you start to browse for new bins and racks and over-the-door solutions. A common pitfall DesAuguste sees is people buying new kitchen cabinet organizers before they’ve even cleaned out their own.
“What might be cute or work for someone else’s kitchen might not work in yours,” she says. “It’s like a game of Tetris. You need to see what you have and know your own space before you can find the right solutions and understand how it all fits together.”
While gleaming mesh and modular organizers for kitchen problem spots are no doubt tempting, resist this lure until you’ve done your homework. And keep in mind that you might not need to buy anything new at all. In fact, some of your giveaway items might actually be repurposed as organizing solutions. For instance, a kitchen “junk” drawer organizer may already be living in your home in the form of an ice cube tray or an old muffin tin.
5. Problem Solve.
No one ever seems to have the problem of too much space in the kitchen, so much of the organizational work will be about consolidating and reconfiguring. A big issue DesAuguste sees is that people tend to use up too much of their prime kitchen real estate for parking everyday items like mail, keys, and purses. That’s space that could be better used for cooking prep, eating, or even food storage.
“A lot of times the kitchen is in a central location in the home or the garage is right off the kitchen, so this is where people drop the mail and everything else,” DesAuguste says. “I always try to set up another zone that is kitchen adjacent, like a console table, for this purpose.”
As you start to put things back into cabinets and shelves, group everything by size and accessibility, making the lightest and the most-used items easiest to reach. Employ vertical dividers or pop-up shelves or risers to maximize area. If need be, find solutions for awkward items like pot lids and employ turntables for those frustrating wedge-shaped corner storage areas. Consider hanging pots or stemware on racks, knives on magnetic strips, or mugs on hooks to free up cabinets. Don’t forget about cabinet doors as another place to store things like cleaning rags, plastic bags, aluminum foil, or even cutting boards.
6. Be Flexible.
A perpetual problem area for Mazurkewicz’s clients is the pantry. Because it’s typically used to store food and its contents vary over time, it requires a more dynamic set of storage solutions.
“Pantries are constantly in flux, so they continually need to be updated,” he says. “Flexibility in the pantry is key to keeping it organized.”
In the pantry, as elsewhere in the kitchen, bins, trays, and baskets will always be your friends. Mazurkewicz suggests these additional tips for saving space in the pantry and cabinets: unboxing food items and using baskets or bins to store individually wrapped snacks; and using clear shoe box bins to store small tools and lesser-used baking items such as cookie cutters and sprinkles.
From there, deciding how to organize kitchen cabinets and the pantry can be a reflection of your personality and aesthetic choices. For some people, that’s labeled jars. Others prefer color coordination. Maybe simply opening up space, getting rid of old stuff, and retooling the layout is enough for now.
7. Keep it Cool.
Don’t forget to clean and organize your refrigerator. For most of us, this should be a routine task, but if you haven’t done it in a while, you’ll want it to be as neat and orderly as the rest of your newly refreshed kitchen. Where possible, use clear containers and bins, storing like items together to avoid rummaging that leads to spills. Even better: An organized refrigerator will help you minimize food waste and save money.
8. Reorganized, for Good.
Everything is finally put away and the kitchen finally looks usable again. Is organization complete? And how do you actually know you’ve done it right?
“When the space is no longer stressful, you can function easily in it, and when everything has a home, you’re pretty close to organized,” Mazurkewicz says.
That being said, experts say that this is not a one and done challenge. Be prepared to revisit these decisions in six months to a year as your needs and habits change, or you acquire more things, or you prepare for a move or a life change.
It’s also a good idea to start preparing now for the kind of inevitable backsliding that will happen by preemptively trying to keep your disorganization in check. DesAuguste reminds clients to create some general daily guidelines for their households going forward, assigning tasks to different members, or creating a ritual nightly five-minute pickup after dinner. “I compare it to when you visit the dentist for teeth cleaning. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to brush your teeth every day until you go back to the dentist again,” she says.
“It’s the same thing with organizing. If you build the organization into your regular routine, it’s so much easier to keep things under control.”
