How to Organize Kitchen Cabinets

Have you ever looked inside your kitchen cabinets and panicked? Do you ever open your cabinet doors and wonder what you can possibly do to keep your cabinets from looking so disorganized?

You’re not alone. Most homeowners have more “stuff” than they need in their kitchen, and finding a way to store it all can indeed be difficult. Aside from giving away or tossing all the extra dishes, bowls, utensils, and small appliances, we’re always looking for other ways to keep our “stuff” and help it fit into our drawers and cabinets.

Never fear! We’ve got 20 solutions to help you organization your kitchen cabinets and keep them looking tidy!

1. Use drawer organizers – Do you have a junk drawer? Everyone does! Put that drawer – and all your others – can stay neat and clean by using drawer organizers. Inserts or drawer dividers can help you categorize small utensils and other items that easily get lost. This way, you can find what you need immediately rather than wasting time routing through everything.

2. Consider slide-out cabinet shelves – Reach into the back of your cabinets and your never quite sure what you’ll find. Dishes, bowls, or even cans and packages of food can get pushed to the back of the space where they’re seemingly lost forever. However, with slide-out shelves, you can see everything in your cabinet by merely pulling out each shelf.

3. Make use of narrow spaces – You know that skinny slice of extra space beside the range? You can install a pull-out rack there where you can put spices and other things that you use often while cooking.

4. Build a recycling area – If trash and recycling always make your kitchen look messy, include a pull-out cabinet where you can place two bins, one for each. These bins hide the ugly stuff and are easy to lift up and pull out when it’s trash or recycling day at your house.

5. Include a kitchen sink cabinet organizer – Yes, if you’re like most people, the area underneath your kitchen sink is a mess! But it doesn’t have to be, if you include a sink area organizer when you renovate your kitchen cabinets, it’ll be easier to find the dishwashing liquid, sponges, scrubbers, and everything else you keep under there.

6. Chose a vertical cabinet for cleaning supplies – It can be hard to find somewhere to store mops and brooms, so including a vertical cabinet in your kitchen design can help. It doesn’t have to be wide, just tall. This way, you won’t have to trek to the laundry room or coat closet next time you need the dust mop.

7. Install a plate rack – If you have heavy dishes, it’s often difficult to maneuver them. But if you use a plate rack that allows them to be stored standing up, it’ll be much easier to remove them from the cabinet when you need them. Most plate racks fit well in a standard sized cabinet.

8. Put organizers in your pantry – If you’re lucky enough to have room for a pantry, it’s a good idea to find a way to keep it organized. Consider using spice racks, dividers, or anything else that keeps your good sorted. You can also label the shelves to make it easy to find and replace items.

9. Select a wine bottle organizer – If you generally keep several bottles of wine on hand, you can store them in your kitchen by making a wine bottle organizer part of your kitchen cabinet plans. You can also put an insert into an existing cabinet and achieve the same result.

10. Dedicate one drawer to pots and pans – It can be hard to find a place for your large pots and pans. As such, it’s a great idea to include a deep drawer in your kitchen plans, one that’s strong enough to hold heavy cookware.

11. Convert a cabinet to a place for large items – You probably have cutting boards and other tools that sit out on the counter because they’re too big for your kitchen cabinets. So, take one of those cabinets, remove the door, and install dividers to make sections to house boards, cookie sheets, muffin tins, and more.

12. Stack your containers – Food storage containers can be a menace until you store them correctly. Be sure to stack the containers AND the lids so that they fit neatly inside one another. They’ll take up a whole lot less room.

13. How about a lazy Susan? – As strange as the name might be, a lazy Susan – an insert that spins around inside your cabinet – is ideal for keeping organized. Not only does it allow you to store more in your kitchen cabinets put it also keeps items at your fingertips without having to dig for them. These are great for corner kitchen cabinets!

14. Employ tiered kitchen cabinet organizers – By adding inexpensive shelf organizers, you can turn two-shelf cabinets into those with three shelves. It allows you to better store your pots and pans and other items large or small.

15. Include shallow drawers for linens – Often, our table linens wind up in a linen closet in a bathroom or elsewhere in the house because there’s no room in the kitchen. By installing shallow drawers behind a pair of cabinet doors, you can keep your linens close at hand.

16. Consider an “appliance garage” – Don’t want everyone to see your toaster oven or coffee maker? Then ask your kitchen cabinets specialist to build a “garage” for them. That’s a door that raises up when you’re ready to use them. You can even install an outlet inside it!

17. Use trays or baskets – When you have a lot of small items – like tiny boxes of raisins for the kids or snack packs of chips – you can best organize them by placing them in inexpensive trays or baskets that fit into your cabinets or pantry.

18. Add unique features – Need a cutting board that slides out from the cabinet near the sink? How about an ironing board that extends out from your island? If you have certain needs that will help you stay organized, ask your cabinet designer about including them in your plans.

19. Open shelving – If you have lots of vertical wall space, include some open shelving in your design and use it to display pretty items, like grandma’s fine china or those favorite bowls you bought in Italy.

20. Sort by category – Finally, you don’t always need extra features or gadgets to help you stay organized. Sometimes it’s just a matter of taking time to sort items in a sensible way, like breakfast items with other breakfast items or all snacks in one place. It makes everything easier to find.

If you’re considering a kitchen cabinet re-do, whether you’re replacing on refacing, use some of these options to help you stay organized. For more ideas, talk to our experts at www.mrcabinetcare.com.