Now that you have selected and fitted your preferred kitchen cabinets, the task will be to fill them with the items for which you bought them. Maybe, you didn’t get new kitchen cabinets but have recently moved into a new place and need to arrange things in your kitchen cabinet. Ok, just so you don’t feel left out, maybe you are looking to reorganize your kitchen cabinets.
Organizing your kitchen cabinets make your kitchen more enjoyable to use as it is easier to find items when you need them. Moreover, once cooking equipment and ingredients are tucked away neatly in the kitchen cabinets, it makes your kitchen less cluttered.
I will walk you through how to do that in a few simple and effective ways.
How Do You Decide Where to Put Things In Your Kitchen Cabinet?
It would be an easier option to just shove things into your kitchen cabinets and live your life. However, when you or any other person begins to use the kitchen, you will realize it wasn’t such a prudent decision after all.
Here are a few guidelines to help you decide where to put which things in your kitchen cabinet.
- Frequency Of Use
How often you use an item or items can help you decide where to store them in your kitchen cabinets. Make sure those you use frequently are within easier reach than those you do not use every day.
- Group Like Items Together
Similar items must be stored together. For instance, store spices together, then store cutlery together and separately. Mixing unlike items will only make it more difficult for you to find things when you need them.
- Weight
Another way you can decide where to put things in your kitchen cabinet are by their weight. You do not need a scale for this but it may be wise to store heavier utensils in lower cabinets to make it easier to pick them up when need be.
- Users Of The Kitchen
When putting things away in your kitchen cabinets, consider the people who will be using the kitchen. If there is a wheelchair user in your house, for example, you do not want to place certain everyday objects in an upper cabinet they cannot reach.
If you have children in the house also, make sure to keep some dangerous items and cleaning chemicals out of their reach by putting them in higher kitchen cabinets.
13 Tips for Organizing Your Kitchen Cabinets
Organizing your kitchen cabinet is not a difficult task but requires some planning. Just like any other activity, you will need to conceptualize how you want your kitchen cabinet to like and work towards achieving that.
To help you, here are some easy tips or you can call them a guide for organizing your cabinet.
1. Clear The Cabinets
Take out everything from your kitchen cabinets when you have to reorganize the items in there. It will give you a fair idea of where to place what, what to keep, and what to discard.
2. Clean And Air Dry the Cabinets
After everything is out, wipe, dust, and clean the kitchen cabinets with mild detergent and a damp cloth. Then, allow the shelves to dry completely before filling them up again.
If the cabinet is new, wipe off any dust in it before taking steps to organize them.
3. Group Your Items
To make arranging or rearranging easier and even faster, begin by grouping all the items you need to put into your kitchen cabinets. Some helpful tags will be “everyday items”, “used seldom items” and “out of reach items”. You can group all storage bowls and their lids, all saucepans and their lids, and so on.
4. Sort Out Ingredients
I know most of us buy ingredients when the ones we are currently using are still not finished. It could be a discount sale or a great deal. Sometimes, we care less about the expiry date until we get home.
Before organizing or reorganizing your kitchen cabinets, check these dates and sort them out accordingly. Some ingredient containers need to be tossed as they may be empty or may have expired.
5. Repackage And Label Where Necessary
For a more organized look in your cabinets, you can empty some of your pantry items into containers and label them for easier identification. There are tons of storage jars and canisters on the market and some even come with customized labels.
You don’t have to do this but it will make finding ingredients easier even for other users of your kitchen.
6. Do Not Overcrowd
Another tip you should keep in mind when organizing or reorganizing your kitchen cabinets is not to overcrowd them. Overcrowding will lead to the buildup of humidity in your cabinets and may lead to molds and I’m sure you don’t want that.
7. Line The Shelves with Paper Towels
One way to keep humidity in check in your kitchen cabinets is to line the shelves with paper towels. Alternatively, my mum used old newspapers and they worked fine. These liners can also catch any moisture that may have been missed when placing the items in the cabinets.
8. Use Cabinet Dividers and Drawer Organizers
Cabinet divers and drawer organizers are an awesome addition to your kitchen cabinets as per their names, help section and organize the items that go into your kitchen cabinet. There are so many on the market that can perfectly fit into your cabinets and drawers.
They can help organize spice containers, cutlery, and saucepan lids, among many other things.
9. Use The Outer Portion of The Cabinet
As much as we are discussing the insides of the kitchen cabinets, you can make use of the outer portions as well. If it ties in well with your kitchen style, you can fix hooks on the outer cabinets and hang napkins or mugs for instance. Please make sure it is not tacky.
10. Maximize The Storage Space
With the above-stated tips, I will surely hope you maximize the use of your kitchen cabinets. This is another tip for organizing your kitchen cabinet. Once you group like items and get organizers, the likelihood of fully maximizing the storage space in your kitchen cabinets.
11. Make Sure The Items Are Not Moving
This tip is regarding drawers particularly. Whatever you do, make sure that when you pull out your drawers the contents do not move around. This is plain annoying because you may have to keep rearranging the items. Make sure the items are snug.
12. Keep Items Close To Where They Are Used
If for instance you prep your meal on your kitchen counter, and you always need knives for that, it is prudent to keep these knives in a drawer that is close to the counter. It makes things easier.
13. Know Where to Store What
For effective kitchen cabinet organization, decide and know where to store your frequently used cooking equipment and ingredients, also considering their weights sometimes and who would be using them. This is another tip that can help you organize your kitchen cabinets.
What Should You Store in Lower Kitchen Cabinets?
If you have heavy pots and pans, it is ideal to store them in your lower kitchen cabinets. It is much easier to take out heavy items from lower cabinets than bringing them out from heights, risking being hit by them or falling to the floor.
Also, make sure to store items and ingredients that you use daily or frequently in your lower kitchen cabinets. It is just easier to assess them that way every time since it will be too tiring to always reach for them at a height.
What Should You Store in Upper Kitchen Cabinets?
All cooking equipment or items that you do not use frequently are best stored in the upper kitchen cabinets. It makes sense because you do not have to reach for them daily.
Again, especially if you have babies, toddlers, and young children, you need to store fragile items like glassware and things that should be kept out of the reach of children like medications, in your upper kitchen cabinets.
That way, you minimize the occurrence of accidents in the kitchen as kids can be a handful.
Conclusion
Organizing your kitchen cabinets can seem like such a task. However, once done properly, organized kitchen cabinets can make you enjoy your kitchen more. With these tips, I hope you organize and reorganize your kitchen cabinets and maximize the storage space.
