How to Organize your Kitchen

Sometimes the most difficult thing to organize is your kitchen. With dishes constantly stacking up and depending on the amount of time you cook, it can get out of wack really quickly. Here are a few tips to help you keep that kitchen organized.

In 5 minutes you can:

• Place dirty dishes in the dishwasher
• Clean the kitchen sink
• Take out the trash
• Put away clean dishes
• Set the table
• Organize your spice rack
• Sort through your grocery coupons
• Make your grocery list
• Get the ingredients for your next meal ready

Here are 5 things that should be thrown away:

• Expired Cleaning Products
• Expired foods, produce, milk
• Broken flatware
• Broken Dishes
• Anything with Mold, rags, mops, sponges

To maintain an organized kitchen the key to it is balance and discipline. There must first be a plan in place and then it must be kept. Create a schedule for the dishes. This would probably be unorthodox and extreme for some but, I have a friend who does all of her cooking on Sunday. She then neatly stores all of her meals in labeled Tupperware containers in the fridge for each day. Ie. Monday Lunch Monday Dinner etc.

This saves her lots of time throughout the week and makes it easier for her on her shopping list. All she does is make a list of what she would like to cook for the week, gets the items and does them all at once. She then spends the time that she would have spent cooking getting through the rest of her errands and chores. Most of the time its only 30 min/ per day just to catch up on everything. Then the rest of the day is hers to spend with her family.

Now I know this wouldn’t be for everyone, but it is a creative way to make a plan and strategy and stick to it.

Here are some great Kitchen Organizing Hints:

• Stock up on paper plates for fast meals. They save time on dishwashing and you can just throw them away when you are done. They can be used to microwave, as a cutting board, a spoon rest and a dust pan. Paper plates are one of my best friends for quick meals. For heavy meals all you have to do is place a real plate underneath the paper plate and there would still be no dishes to wash.
• Store your items where they would be most accessible. Place items where you will use them the most. I know this sounds simple, but a lot of people fail to do this and they spend more time looking for or moving around to the items as opposed to having it within arms reach.
• Keep items that you don’t use very often, like special gadgets and appliances on a high shelf away from you.
• Hang items that you can keep overhead on a pantry closet door or overhead.
• Keep utensils in an easy to reach location
• Place the entire roll of Plastic bags inside of your trash can. This way every time you empty it you can quickly grab the next one. Just make sure not to throw them away. I have been guilty of this once or twice.
• Keep your corks from your bottles. You can use them to cover the tips of your knives and other pointed objects to prevent getting injured
• Keep a couple glass jars as a miscellaneous storage. Place rubber bands screws paper clips or items that really don’t have a home in there. It’s great because you can see whats inside
• Instead of using drawers for your knives you can use a magnetized knife rack to help increase storage space

Hope these tips help you.

Remember:

Keep it Clean!