Kitchen Reorganization: How To!

The first thing that most people organize when they move to a new place is the kitchen. Having that space planned out is the trick to a happy, less angry, moving days. How do you tackle kitchen reorganization in the midst of moving? Here are just a couple of tricks:

Go in With a Plan for Kitchen Reorganization

girl planning her move

It is best to start from a good place and improve upon it than it is to try to completely reorganize your already existing kitchen. This isn’t a matter of difficulty, but more a problem of breaking habits – like remembering where to put the bowls after a wash.

Kitchen Reorganization 101: Make Work Areas

A clean kitchen

Be realistic and arrange your kitchen so it flows naturally. Keep cooking and bakeware in a different part of your kitchen than eating utensils. Keep these areas separate. All your cooking prep, cookware, and eating utensils should stay within their kitchen zones – both when stored and when in use. Do not allow the breakdown of the kitchen reorganization system or the whole thing will be chaos.

Utilize the Cabinet Door

kitchen reorganization for pots and pans

Put little hooks on the inside of cabinet doors to hold the lids. Now they are exactly where they should be all the time; they don’t ruin the organizational flow, and it impresses every guest I have in my kitchen. Wow your friends, dazzle your enemies; reorganize your pot lids now.

Ditch Single Purpose Things

Do you NEED strawberry core removers, or breakfast sandwich makers, or panini presses? They take up a whole lot of space and do not offer a whole lot of utility to them. Instead, figure out what your needs are, how often you utilize these tools and then toss them. Realistically all of them. No one needs a panini press unless you’re a Panera. You have pans. Put some ciabatta slices in the pan, lightly oiled, with whatever toppings you’d like, toast lightly, reduce heat, and cover for about a minute to melt the cheese. You just made a panini. Took a minute, maybe two. Reducing clutter is important to kitchen reorganzation.

Vertical Space is Your Ally

Put some tension rods under the sink, boom. Can hang the cleaning sprays. Got some S-hooks to hang from the ceiling, boom. All pots and pans are within reach all the time. Take advantage of the space you don’t use when doing your kitchen reorganization. That’s the whole trick to organizing a kitchen. It’s brilliant, it’s easy and it looks cool when done well.

Toss Store-Bought Cookbooks If You Don’t Use Them

Files in Bundles

Let’s be real. Do you use your cookbooks anymore? Like an actual physical cookbook? If it’s all on kindle or some other e-reader anyway, toss them. Welcome yourself to the future by using an e-reader. They take up no space and can be stored pretty much anywhere. They are handy, they are cheap, and if you hide them after you cook they make you seem more impressive – because no one can see the stack of cookbooks you used. Be sure to hang on to those family cookbooks.

Make Sure You Can See EVERYTHING

kitchen pantry reorganization

Never, under any circumstances, put something behind another thing. This is kitchen reorganization 101! You will never use that hidden item because you will forget that it is there. When you are organizing your pantry or cabinets, be sure that you can see everything that you are storing. If you don’t, you may as well throw away the hiding items. They are useless to you now anyway.

This is just a starting point, something to get the juices flowing so you can organize the kitchen the way you want to. No two kitchens are or should be alike. Everyone has different needs, and these are the things that work for me, and hopefully, some of it will work for you.

If you have a lot of special or sentimental items, or you just need a place to keep some stuff while reorganizing – and potentially renovating – your kitchen, check out iStorage for your self-storage needs. They have storage solutions for every budget, and options for every need. Check them out today!