Do The Best With Your Existing Situation
A small or a large kitchen can totally serve your needs, depending on how you manage what you have. The key is not to over-saturate the space, but not under-utilize it either. There’s a balance. Following, a few techniques will be briefly explored to give you some ideas about how to best organize kitchen cabinets, drawers, and even your pantry.
The Drawers
Kitchen drawers get out of order quickly. It’s especially easy to just throw silverware in the drawer willy-nilly after a wash. This is a bad idea. Firstly, it’s possible you’ll unload the dishwasher when it hasn’t been washed yet. Especially in larger families, this common mistake takes place all the time. Throwing dirty silverware in your drawer can attract bugs.
Secondly, diverse cutlery can actually damage the drawer. When you’ve got a spatula in a drawer lying with the flat end at an angle, pulling the drawer out can wedge that spatula between the roof of the drawer and its bottom. For one thing, it becomes difficult to open. For another, as you pull, you stress the structural integrity of the drawer. It’s a lose-lose scenario. To prevent this you can install high quality soft close drawer slides. Sidemount and undermount are the best types of drawer slides to use.
What you want to do is separate out cutlery based on what it’s used for. Butter knives, spoons, and forks should be separated into their own areas. You can either get trays designed to separate out silverware, or you can partition the drawer yourself. Big spoons should have their own spot, and non-traditional cutlery may require another drawer.
Spatulas and the like should be stored so they don’t damage your drawer. You might even hang them above the stove on hooks you install just for such a purpose. This can also be a great way to store pots and pans.
Kitchen Cabinets
When it comes to kitchen cabinets, sometimes your best bet is going to be a remodel. This can be costly, but it can also be cost-effective if you buy the right sort of cabinets and install them yourself. Ready To Assemble, or RTA, cabinets have much greater customization. Check out The RTA Cabinets – your online kitchen cabinet store for options in RTA cabinetry.
With your cabinets, like with your drawers, you want to maximize storage space without compromising structural integrity. Plates, bowls, saucers, and tupperware should be stored separately in conformity to kind. What might make sense is taking everything out, looking at what you have, and finding ways of organizing it.
Partitioning cabinetry can be key. What you want to do is put everything in as you intend it to be stored, and then perhaps use a bit of wood or plastic to further sanction off areas of storage space. Also, in terms of aesthetic, refacing kitchen cabinets could be a good idea just for general refurbishment.
The Pantry
Pantries end up being like closets: everything goes in, and a mess results. Here’s what you want to do: put the things you need at eye-level. Perhaps use a series of baskets, and don’t be afraid to label them. Things you don’t use very much should be either higher or lower than your sightline, depending on how much space you need, and what items you’re storing.
Separate things out by category. Canned goods, crackers, medicine, seasoning—none of it should be jumbled together. A spice rack makes a lot of sense, and using cubbies to store appliances is also convenient.
A More Organized Kitchen
Kitchen drawers, kitchen cabinets, and kitchen pantries are the most likely areas where messes will accrue and expand. If you’re going to keep your kitchen in order, you want to figure out how best to manage these portions of the space.
