Golden Rules for Decluttering Your Kitchen
Golden Rules for Decluttering Your Kitchen
How to Declutter Your Kitchen ?
You probably use your kitchen more than any other room in the house, and, if you cook even semi-regularly, you likely have a lot of stuff in it. Utensils, cookware, small appliances, food, spices, and more likely leave little space in your kitchen cabinets, drawers, and counter tops. We want to help you take back your kitchen from clutter! Our kitchen declutter tips will make this space more enjoyable and hopefully make cooking less stressful.
Start by Decluttering Kitchen Countertops
Kitchen counters are clutter-magnets in most homes, so this is a great first step for anyone looking to declutter their kitchens.This small, two-step project will look and feel big when you are done
Step 1: Clear everything off your kitchen counters except 3-5 essential items (such as a coffee maker or knife block).
You can put the counter clutter on the kitchen table or on the floor, but get the stuff off the counter.
Step 2: Put away or find another home for everything you cleared off the counter. If you’re left with a lot of papers or junk mail, trash them or move items that need to be addressed to your office or workspace.
This is a project that only takes a few minutes, unless you have piles of things in your kitchen, in which case you may need an hour. Either way, it will feel like a NEW kitchen when you are done!
Divide the Kitchen into Zones
We recommend decluttering one section of your kitchen at a time to avoid a potentially bigger mess. Assigning zones can also help you improve the organization of your kitchen things.- Identify space near the stove for cooking utensils, pots and pans. These items should be conveniently located near where you cook.
- Unless you bake every day, store your baking supplies away in a cabinet or on a shelf – if you have a mixer on your countertop try to corral your baking supplies near it.
- Storage bags, cling wrap, aluminum foil and similar items should get their own zone, as well as cleaning supplies.
Purge and Relocate
As you start to declutter your kitchen, consider throwing away or donating any items you come across that haven’t been touched in a year. When you decide to keep an item you use infrequently, you may want to put it away in storage in another part of your home, especially if you’re low on real estate in your kitchen. And be sure to move anything you come across that belongs in another zone to its new home.Small Appliances: If you use that food dehydrator or deep fryer maybe once a year, you should put it in your “Get Rid of It" bin. Inventory all of the small appliances you have and only keep what you really use. Appliances that do multiple things tend to be keepers.
Many of us have waffle irons, crock pots, egg slicers, choppers, food processors, and so many more small appliances and gadgets that take up space. And yet, rather than pulling out and dirtying the chopper with a dozen parts to clean, we grab our simple knife when we need to cut up an onion. Consider getting rid of many of the “convenience" items that you rarely use as you streamline your kitchen.
Plastic Storage Containers: If you’re hoarding enough plastic storage containers to open your own take-out restaurant, it’s time to purge. Start with the lids – there always seem to be fewer lids than bottoms in my house. Match each lid up to a bottom. If you have any stragglers you can get rid of them.
You can keep some spare containers to accommodate occasions when you may need more plastic storage containers, but you should consider keeping them in the basement or somewhere outside the kitchen.
Pots & Pans: Chances are you only have so many burners on your stove that you can use at once, so you may not truly need all of the pots, pans, cookie sheets and whatever else you have. Unless it serves a special purpose, and you use it frequently, duplicate pots and pans should get donated.
Pro Tip for Decluttering Kitchen Cabinets
Install hooks along the backsplash or underneath cabinets so you can hang pots and pans instead of storing them in your kitchen cabinets.
We know it can be tough to part with a lot of the items in your kitchen, but simple is simply better when you’re trying to limit the chaos in this high-traffic space. If you’re unsure about getting rid of some of your kitchen tools, try storing them away in a box and see if you really need them over the course of the next year. If not, take that box straight to Goodwill!
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