Life Hack: 5 Easy Tips for Organizing Your Kitchen

I’ll admit it. I love organized storage. Maybe it’s the chaotic way my brain thinks that drives me to make my tangible world have less chaos in it. But I doubt I’m alone when I say that nothing drives me crazier than clutter in my cabinets and closets making me dig through piles of stuff to find what I’m looking for at that moment.

And yeah, I get a kick out of discovering ways to repurpose items to make my space more organized and systematic. It’s a challenge and I’m up for it. A majority of the items in this article are from the office supply section of a store. And lastly, I love sharing my ideas with all of you out there. Who knows, maybe you’ll find something here that makes your world a little less chaotic.

Here’s what I have for you today:

The Office Clip

This is for those of you who use the Keurig style coffee machines. If your house is like ours, everyone is getting their breakfast at a different time during the mornings—at least during the week days. So being able to make a single cup of coffee, when we want it, works best for us.
Yes, these coffeemakers are said to be the cause of millions of little k-cups going into the trash. But we use only the recycle or bio-degradable cups – so cut us some slack for that. Heh
That aside, I noticed that the water reservoir had a habit of getting condensation in it, no matter what the house temperature was. It bothered me because condensation sitting there makes me think of germs and bacteria growing. And I didn’t want to leave the lid open all the time. Who knows what might find its way in. Nothing worked for this until the day I had the idea of putting one of the little office clips on the lip of the reservoir, to keep the lid from completely closing. When the lid is lowered the clip creates a slight vent for fresh air. Voila! No more condensation.

Shoe Storage Racks

There are certain foods that beg to be cooked in our big, heavy cast iron skillets, but the skillets are a bear to drag out of a conventional kitchen cabinet. And all my other large pans take up lots of room too. What a pain to have to unload a cabinet of all the smaller pans, that are regularly used, so I can get to the lesser used big pans in the back.

I found a solution for this dilemma at the local Container Store. I purchased a sturdy shoe rack, made with wood frame and metal shelving. The measurements were perfect to allow it to sit under the bottom shelf in our pantry and it only used up half of the width. Now I store all our big skillets in one easy to reach manner. No more digging through other pans and hurting my back in the process.

Plastic Magazine Holder

In the past I’ve stored our boxes of foil, plastic wrap and wax paper in a kitchen drawer. Most of the time that meant the boxes were stacked on top of one another and to get one out, others had to be removed first.

But I wanted to use the kitchen drawers for other items, so I recently came up with something I like much better. A plastic desk magazine holder has just the right amount of space to stack a variety of boxes. It’s easy to see what you have on hand and pull one box out to use (and put back again). Instead of being tucked away in drawer, I sat the plastic holder on a shelf in the pantry where we all have easy access to it. It’s been much more convenient to use. And freed up tons of drawer space.

Pan Lid Holder

In not-so-olden times dinner plates were much smaller in circumference than dinner plates produced today. Which is probably one the reasons most of us eat too much food at mealtimes these days I’d guess.

The other issue is that sitting them in a stack on a shelf in one of your cabinets takes up far too much room. especially when you have limited cabinet space. A sturdy plastic-coated pan lid holder works solved the issue for me. I simply stood the dishes up in the holder instead of stacking them. Our dishes are easy to pull out and put back in after washing.

Plastic Pull Out Basket

None of us in our house take any medicines, but we are big on natural supplements, as well as herbal preventions and remedies. So we tend to have a lot of large and small bottles of capsules on hand at all times. It’s easy to lose track of them in the pantry or kitchen cabinets. And again, I hate to have to dig through cabinets to find something. This small handled basket fits the bill. It slides in and out of the pantry shelf and keeps all the bottles in one location. Easy to reach and easy to return. Easy does it!