Kitchen Organization Tips: Cooking Without Clutter

Try these great ideas to get your kitchen organized for good.

It's easy for clutter and mess to take over the kitchen. However, with a little kitchen organization, you can regain and maintain control over the clutter.

1. Assess the situation
Walk into your kitchen with an open eye and a notebook and pen. What is the layout? You can make a very basic sketch of your kitchen to help in the new kitchen organization. First, take a critical look at your counter tops. What needs to be there? What doesn't? Make a list with two columns, one for what stays on the counters and one for what goes. Also, look at how your cabinets are organized. Are things located close to where they are used?

2. Organize to fit your needs
Now that you have an inventory of what you have, the next step in your kitchen organization project is to know where to put everything. Using your map and the list from above can help make this step easier. The following are also some great tips to help:

• Have cooking utensils near the stove.
• Put drinking glasses near the refrigerator.
• Create a little coffee station that has all of your coffee supplies right above the coffee pot.
  In the pantry, buy step shelves so that you can see your cans of food. Buy a plastic milk crate and put any extra cans in the crate at the bottom of the pantry. You can use that to re-stock.
• Create a lunch-making section with all the supplies that you need to pack lunches.
• Instead of saving all of your cooking magazines, cut out the recipes you use (or want to use) and create a notebook binder of recipes. Placing the recipes in plastic sleeves can keep them clean while you cook.
• Create another binder for takeout menus.

3. Maintain
Now that you have completed your kitchen organization, the key is to maintain it. Spend ten to fifteen minutes a day de-cluttering your kitchen. Make a new rule -- nothing stays on the countertops unless you use it everyday. Do you really need that mixer and blender cluttering your countertop? Put them where you can get them when you need them. Also, if the car keys and mail stubbornly return to the same spot on the counter, go ahead and give in. But first, buy some sort of cubby that can attractively hold these items.

With a little hard work and continual maintenance, you can have the kitchen organization that you have always wanted.