Lid chaos in the cupboard, too little storage space and a different collection in every corner? We present a few tips and ideas on how to organise your kitchen better.
Where is the right spice for Thai curry and weren’t the pot holders right here yesterday? Yeah, the kitchen can get really messy sometimes. If that bugs you, we have some handy kitchen hacks that will help you clean up the mess.
Where to start organizing the kitchen?
If you want to start from scratch, you should clear out everything first. Aaaallles. You can also use this opportunity to clean out the cupboards. 😉 This is how you proceed in the first step:
- Sort out those foods that are definitely no longer edible.
- Sort out your food by frequency of use and best before date.
- You also sort the items by frequency of use and by which ones are useless and can be removed!
You can donate food and items that are still usable or edible but will not be used or consumed by you in the foreseeable future (e.g. barter refrigerators) or give them away to friends, family or neighbours.
Organising the kitchen: That’s what counts!
Creating uniformity
For a tidy picture in the kitchen, storage jars are particularly suitable, you can fill everything into them loosely. Even opened packages often leave a messy impression, so it’s best to refill the leftovers into storage jars.
Using every corner of the kitchen
There are many helpers with which even the smallest corners can be exploited. These include:
- Cover holder
- Small shelves to place on the shelves, creating storage space for dishes and pots
- Stackable storage containers
- Hooks for cups, either on open shelves or in the cupboard
- Wall organizer
Sorting correctly
The rule is: everything you often need comes to the front or where it is handy. The rest? Can be put further back into the cupboards, even in the unpleasant corners at the bottom and at the back (or you can use one of the following tricks …).
If you want to avoid confusion with storage jars, label them accordingly (salt, sugar). Cut out the cooking instructions from the packaging and stick them on the back of the jar with a transparent adhesive strip.
4 tips and tools to keep things tidy
1. Separator
In deep drawers, lighter things tend to fall over sometimes. To prevent this from happening, install partitions or alternatively get clamping bars (actually for curtains 😉) which you clamp in between! Also great for keeping boards in check!
2. Knife block
With a knife block you have all the important knives ready for cooking. Even a magnetic strip, attached to the wall, creates order.
3. Revolving shelves
For many cabinets there are solutions for turning or unscrewing. Ideal for pots and pans!
4. Rollable all-purpose trolleys
Wasted space between the next cupboard and washing machine? You can use such gaps with rollable trolleys for onion storage, storage containers, lids, etc.
Problem zone open shelf
Not everyone has enough kitchen cabinets to store everything. But it can quickly look chaotic on one or more open shelves, but even this can be remedied.
- Use hooks, for example, to hang the cups sorted in a row instead of stacking them wildly.
- Get boxes and other large containers for storing utensils and other items.
- Use (uniform) storage jars here too.
- For spices you can get a spice carousel or a rotating plate (tip: you can put the spices in a small tray and then on the rotating plate, so nothing falls out!)
Organizing a refrigerator
How can the refrigerator be put away properly? You can put everything in the fridge as you like – but there is a point in dividing it up in a refrigerator. Because the compartments at the bottom are cooler (4° Celsius) than the upper ones, which are at about 12° Celsius. And this is the best way to put it away:
Even more hacks and ideas for the kitchen
As you can see, there are a lot of tricks to use the space in the kitchen: Whether with rotating trays to get better access to things in the back of the cupboard, to store spices within easy reach and neatly arranged (!) in the drawers or to get a grip on bulky pans with hooks.