How I organized my whole kitchen

I don’t know how it happened. Well, I guess I do but I don’t know how I tolerated it for so long. Our kitchen cabinets have been a disaster, so bad I cannot believe I’m showing it on the internet but I hope some of you can relate. Last month, Matt and I kind of started getting really antsy with all of the stuff around. Right after Christmas, we went through each room and purged all the junk we no longer wanted/used/needed. It felt so good. Last weekend I finally tackled the kitchen. I opened every cabinet and every drawer and cleaned them all out. I learned a few things along the way so I’m passing along my tips and sharing how I organized my whole kitchen so that you can do it too!

How to organize your kitchen

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The first step to organize your kitchen is to take everything out. It has to get worse before it gets better. In order to survey your space and be sure that you are making the most of your space, take everything out. Our kitchen was a scary sight during this process. Counters and floors were covered in mugs and tupperware.

Purge – After you have everything in view, you can start to get rid of the stuff that you no longer use/need. For me, that was all my plastic tupperware. I got a glass food storage set a couple of months ago and have been using those pieces almost exclusively so it was time to get rid of the plastic pieces. I also relocated a bunch of my serving pieces to my prop closet. I found random kitchen gadgets that had been hiding in the way back of drawers and got rid of other gadgets that were never used. I have no idea how we accumulate so much stuff but giving all the kitchen cabinets and drawers a good purge every now and then does wonders for space.

Survey the space – If you really want to organize your kitchen once and for all, not just for now, survey your space. Are you using it in the best way? Take a look at the space you have available. If the answer is no, then consider ways that you could rearrange items that make the space work better for you. I moved my girls’ dishes from an upper cabinet to down below where they could be reached by little hands. I moved utensils around so that they could be better organized as well.

Put everything back – like items together – At this point, I lined all the cabinets with contact paper and then put everything back in a better, more organized and systematic way. I started on one side of my kitchen and worked my way around the room. I used these metal shelves within the cabinets for additional organization. They are great for stacking items like food storage and mixing bowls. I also bought tons of drawer organizers to finally corral all of our utensils. I think my drawers were the biggest culprit of kitchen chaos. After a trip to IKEA I snagged these affordable drawer organizers and used them to keep all of the utensils organized.

I have one drawer for cooking utensils – naturally, it’s next to the stove.

I’ve got another for more baking and miscellaneous items.

After purging, I realized I didn’t need as much space as before so things fit so nicely back into the cabinets and drawers.

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