4 Ways to Make Your Kitchen More Organized {Guest Post}

If you know me you know how much I love to have my kitchen organized!!  Life right now feels kind of messy with the summer going on and so many things going on in my kitchen.  This week I want to get more organized in my kitchen and I am super inspired by Aurora and her 4 ways to make your kictchen more organized!  

4 Ways to Make Your Kitchen More Organized

By Aurora McCausland

The kitchen. The room where you spend more waking hours than any other. It’s the room that you dread cleaning, because it seems to get trashed in the time that it takes to blink. How many times have you done the dishes, feeling satisfied at how clean your kitchen is, only to have your sink overflowing with dishes and the floor covered in a sticky substance just a few hours later? We’ve all been there. Unfortunately, that’s just the nature of the kitchen. It gets messier faster than any other room of the house. But that doesn’t mean that you should give up on ever having the sparkly kitchen of your dreams. In fact, with a little bit of organization, your kitchen can be cleaner, more functional, and more enjoyable to spend time in.

Make the most of your shelves

Whether you have a spacious pantry, or just a few extra cupboards that you call a pantry, you probably have a few shelves in your kitchen that you use for storage purposes aside from your dishes and tupperware. You have these shelves, so make the most of them! It’s hard to feel like you have control over anything going on in your kitchen if it’s such a mess that you can’t find the flour amidst the chaos. You have shelves, so use them! Just reorganizing them isn’t going to solve the problem, though. Get some easy to use bins and containers, to help you separate and organize everything in your pantry and on your shelves. Whatever organizational method makes most sense to you is the one that you should use. By using these bins and containers, you will keep everything where it’s actually supposed to go, and you’ll eliminate at least a few unnecessary messes.

Label everything clearly

Speaking of bins and containers…make sure that they’re clearly marked! Especially if you’re working with large or deep containers that you won’t be able to easily and clearly see what is inside of them at a quick glance. Having all of your containers marked and labeled will save you time because you’ll know where everything is without searching. This also helps you keep your messes to a minimum since you won’t have to dig through all of your cupboards, as you can clearly see which bin has the canned beans in it. Eliminating spills and messes also lessens the likelihood that you’ll have a pest infestation, which saves you a lot of headache and hassle. The best way to label your storage containers is with some sort of label that can be removed, like from a label maker or even a label written on a piece of tape. If you write directly onto the container, it will be hard to reuse later on if you ever need to use it for a different purpose.

Keep your chemicals and cleaning supplies separate from your food

For obvious reasons, your cleaning supplies should not belong in the same cupboard as your food does. Contamination is all too possible, which is dangerous and could lead to a lot  of unnecessary harm. We recommend storing all of your chemicals and cleaning supplies under the kitchen sink. (This is also a great place to store that awkward-but-necessary fire extinguisher.) This makes them easy to access and out of the way of your food and cooking. This is a great place to utilize a few more bins and containers to keep all of your bottles and cleansers separated. You can also use an old over-the-door shoe hanger to store your cleaning supplies in. Cut it short enough to hang over the door of the cupboard, and then place all of your bottles inside it. This saves you tons of space, and makes them easier to access when you need them.

Throw out your mismatched dishes

It’s hard to part with anything, especially if it’s something that is still functional and can serve a purpose. The truth is, though, when it comes to your dishes, you probably have too many. We all end up with plates in our cupboards that friends left after the Christmas party, or that you got in college and never threw out. Plates that you don’t really need. Don’t waste them, and take them to a local thrift store and donate them. Having too much of something makes your kitchen disorganized. The same goes for all of those tupperware lids that no longer have containers to go with them.

And if I might just add this plug to our new family business!  Check out The Cup Caddy on Etsy to keep your kitchen free of a cups all over the counters and in the sink!!