The kitchen is hands-down one of the most important rooms in your home. It doesn’t matter whether Doordash delivery is you daily dinner go-to or you’re a master chef in the making. We all need a place to prepare and store our food, even if it’s just takeout.
Considering the sheer number and variety of things you store in your kitchen (plastic containers, small appliances, food, and dishware, just to name a few) we suspect most of you are harboring some sort of clutter in your kitchen at this very moment.
Get your clutter under control with these tips from Houston organizing expert Nancy Devlin. Follow her pro advice and liberate yourself from the insanity of rummaging through your cabinets looking for that one plastic container lid you just can’t find.
Here’s how she suggests organizing your kitchen:
Refrigerator and freezer:
• Take everything out! Throw out old food, anything expired, don’t know what it is frozen items, and freezer burned food
• Clean all empty shelves and bins well
• Use InterDesign Deep Fridge Bins for organizing like products
• Label the bins, you can label anything!
• Organize like items together before you put back in freezer or refrigerator, utilizing bins when it makes sense
• Place items that you use the most in the front
• Practice First in, First out. Put newer item in back of same older item so you use the older first
Spices:
• Same process, get all spices out of pantry, shelves, cupboards
• Spices do not officially expire but they do lose their potency and flavor. Generally, they are good for 2-3 years. If in doubt of age, smell for freshness and throw out what is not fragrant.
• Keep in original containers
• Organize alphabetically or by type, whichever makes sense to you.
• Organize in a drawer near the stove using liners, in the pantry or cupboard shelf using tiered shelves or a lazy susan, or if you are lucky enough in your built in spice pull out drawer
Plastic containers:
• Again, get all plastic containers out. Match lids to containers.
• Recycle what is stained, scratched, deformed, microwaved to extinction, or has no top to match
• Keep plastic containers to a minimum, it takes up a lot of space and most people have way too much!
• Convert plastic containers to glass containers for storage. Much better for food, clean up, re-heating, and will last forever
Nancy Devlin owns and runs Efficient Living, a Houston-based organizing service. From file management to full-home decluttering, Devlin has helped her clients transform chaos into order since 2009.