10 Organization Tips For Your Kitchen And Dining Areas
It can be a challenge to focus on organization when you're busy tripping over baby toys and sorting through the mail, but organizing your kitchen and dining areas to be more efficient is a great way to make cooking, eating and cleaning less stressful and more fun. Here are 10 great tips to help you get started.
1. Use Glass Canisters
Whether you're organizing napkin rings or bulk goods, glass canisters make everything look and feel much more organized. As an added benefit, when you use glass canisters for bulk items you can easily see when you're running low on oats, beans, rice and other pantry staples.
2. Multiple-Shelved Lazy Susan
If you've got a bunch of spices, oils, and vinegars you use pretty regularly while cooking, organize them on a two-layer Lazy Susan. You can easily spin it and grab whatever you need while cooking, and then place it back when you're done. No clean up!
3. Organize Storage Containers
We probably waste several days of our lives looking for matching lids to plastic and glass containers. Instead of tossing them all in a cabinet, stack them neatly in a drawer or on a shelf, and utilize magazine racks and small storage bins to organize lids and smaller sauce containers. Now you'll always know where to look for storage containers!
4. Move The Dinnerware
Do you regularly use plates while you're cooking? What about regular utensils? If not, move these items to a cabinet in the dining area. They can go straight to the table before the meal so you can use the room in the kitchen for cooking items only.
5. Use Roller Shelf Organizers
You want things to be accessible, but if you only use that gigantic stockpot once a month, you probably want it tucked out of the way. Use rolling shelf organizers to stack all of your pots, pans, lids, and other accessories based on use. You can push things all the way to the back and easily roll them out when necessary.
6. Group Together Related Objects
Keep your baking pans and mixer grouped together in the same place in the kitchen. Give each category a designated section! For example, have a cabinet full of bakeware, and a shelf solely for baking ingredients like sugar, flour, vanilla and baking soda. It will be so much easier to find everything when you decide to make cookies and muffins!
7. Keep TV Tables Around
Leave the accent pillows and throws in the living room, but grab a few of those folding TV tables and end tables (preferably those that somewhat match your dining room table). Folding tables and TV trays are great for serving larger items in the dining room. Set up a table next to the chef to cut the meat or serve the lasagna. You can also use tables and trays on wheels to get food from the kitchen to the dining room in an easy and organized manner. Keep things like napkins, water jugs, wine openers, and wine cooling buckets underneath for easy access.
8. Have a Snack Drawer
After organizing the pantry, the last thing you want is hungry kids searching through it and causing disarray. Keep their curious fingers out of the way by providing a snack drawer or bin for them to find any snacks they want without stealing your cookies for tomorrow's bake sale, or finishing off the bananas and walnuts reserved for banana bread.
9. Remove Packaging
Take granola bars out of the box, pour pasta out of the bags, and remove all excess packaging. Organize those items in storage bins, baskets, or glass canisters instead. This way your pantry will look much nicer, and you can save a lot of space!
10. Organize Over The Door
There are many different ways to organize things over the back of the door, with various racks and wire shelves. This is a great place for items like zip-top sandwich bags, plastic wrap, foil, and more. You can also store back-up rolls of paper towels and easy-to-grab boxes of tea bags.
Check out LTD Commodities for everything you need to get your hone organized. Looking for more storage ideas? Check out these kitchen storage ideas you can't ignore.
