Tag: how to organize a kitchen

How To Organize Your Kitchen To Be Family Friendly

The kitchen is often the command center of family life. It is where you spend a lot of time with your kids, getting them ready for school, helping them with their homework and of course feeding them.

Kids In The Kitchen

 

Organizing family life

The kitchen is the ideal place to keep on top of important family matters – dates, activities etc etc.

 

 

At a minimum you will need a wall calendar or planner but you may want to extend this to a dry wipe board for each family member where you can keep on top of school projects, homework, tests and after school activities for the kids as well as social engagements and bills to pay for the adults.

For supreme kitchen organization ideas, check out the Daily System by PotteryBarn which is fully customizable.

How To Organize Your Kitchen To Be Family Friendly

For something smaller, MomAgenda has some great Family Planners and Chores Pads.

To help your kids learn to organize themselves, try this craft project and make some home to school place mats so they have a daily tick list of what not to forget.

Kitchen safety

Keeping a handle on family life is not the only way you can organize your kitchen with kids in mind. From a safety point of view you should ensure you have child proofed all low cabinets and drawers with safety catches if you have very small children.

Accessibility for kids

For slightly older children, you should consider creating a snack station – an easily accessible cabinet specifically organized with kids in mind. Fill it with plastic plates, cups, drinks and healthy snacks so they can help themselves when the ‘I’m hungry’ time starts. Just make sure they know it is out of bounds an hour before each meal.

Alternatively you could label drawers and cabinets with the names of items they are likely to want to find. You’ll be amazed at how quickly young ones will learn to read c-h-i-p-s.

The snack station is also a great place to hook up some brightly colored cleaning cloths so they can clean up their own spills.

Getting kids involved

As they get a bit older you may want to organize your kitchen with ‘getting them involved‘ in mind. Rather than stacking dishes, plates, cups and glasses in upper cabinets, move them to lower cabinets, yes even breakable items. This way they can help to set the table or help with emptying the dishwasher and putting things away.

Why not also invest in some kid friendly utensils or cleaning tools so they can help out with food preparation and cleaning up. Kids learn by copying and the younger they are, the more likely they are to want to help out.

If your kids often do their homework in the kitchen, make sure there is a drawer dedicated to school type stationery to save it from lying around on the countertops or getting mixed up with the rest of the junk in the junk drawer.

Finally if you have room, invest in some different colored plastic bins, one for each family member or at least each child. This will allow you to do a quick tidy round removing clutter into the relevant bin for that child to store in the correct place.

Martha Stewart Kitchen Ideas & Organizing Tips

Martha Stewart’s raison d’être in the kitchen is to create a functional but beautiful space.

Many of her kitchen organization ideas are fairly well known, such as ensuring you use all of your wall space, group like items and create activity zones, and some are a little over the top. I mean who has a drawer full of skewers and picks and open shelving might be OK for those with perfectly matching dishware sets and attractive pitchers, but for the rest of us, cabinets with doors are a much better idea.

Martha Stewart Kitchen    Martha Stewart Organizing

Photo credits: MarthaStewart.com.

However, she also has some great organizing ideas that you might not have heard about elsewhere. So here they are: how to organize a kitchen Martha Stewart style!

 

 

Use bird beak shelving for adjustable shelves that can slide in and out. They offer a nice sleek look, with no holes or hardware in sight. Here’s how to make them from an article at LumberJocks.com:

Martha Stewart Kitchen Ideas - Bird Beak Shelving

Choose decorative storage options that can be left on display. Pretty bins and baskets can be used to corral items on shelves. Decant your dish liquid into a decorative container to improve the overall look of your kitchen. Display items that you like looking at as long as they don’t become clutter. Make sure they are being functional whilst on display, for example, use attractive platters to store fruit and vegetables.

Use items that you already own as organizers – perhaps a tray as a shelf divider in your glass cabinet or a baking pan to house your spices, oils and vinegars. Hang a pencil and notepad in the pantry and keep an inventory of your items. You’ll have a quick reference point for what you need to use up or stock up on.

Make your own magnetic message board that matches the colors of your kitchen and use it to keep track of family life. Click HERE to learn how.

Install under cabinet lighting to ensure your countertops are not hidden in the shadows and brighten up every inch of your kitchen.

Don’t underestimate the uses of a rolling cart. They offer storage wherever needed, an extra workspace whenever needed and could even be used as a sideboard or bar when entertaining. They are particularly useful in tight kitchens.

Ensure your family’s safety is paramount by not overlooking this often forgotten element of kitchen organization. Keep a fire extinguisher and first aid kit close by.

For more Martha Stewart kitchen and organizing ideas and tips, check out the Martha Stewart Living Magazine.

Martha Stewart Living Magazine

How To Organize Kitchen Appliances

How To Organize Kitchen Appliances

 

Kitchen appliances tend to take up a lot of space so say ‘No’ to storing them on your countertops unless you use them daily like a coffee maker.

Instead here’s how to organize kitchen appliances in 2 easy steps:

 

 

Step 1 – Get sorting

Pull out all your appliances and put them into three piles – regular use, infrequent use, hardly ever used. Any that no longer work should not even make it into a pile, but should find the quickest route into the trash.

Appliances that are hardly ever used should be tossed or donated (consider Freecycle.org) especially if they are 1-trick ponies like waffle makers.

If you are struggling with this step, have a ‘Use it or donate it’ month, where it gains pride of place on your countertop and you make an effort to use it. If you don’t use it in the month, you know the answer – get it out of there. If you do use it, then great, it’s earned it’s right to take up cabinet space.

Step 2 – Find them a home

Designate a cabinet for appliances – lower cabinets are best for these typically heavy and bulky items and then you can keep upper eye level cabinets for food. Treat yourself to some slide out organizers to give easy access to the appliances stored at the back of the cabinet.

Regularly used appliances should be stored at the front of the cabinet with those used infrequently being at the back. Use twist ties to keep the cords in order before storing and keep small attachments in labeled zip loc bags.

Don’t forget the dead space above upper cabinets if you need more space for seldom used appliances. Store them in attractive baskets up there to keep the overall look of your kitchen uncluttered.

Alternatively keep appliances in a garage or basement or invest in a countertop appliance garage. These are interesting kitchen organization ideas that typically sit in the corner of your countertop and have a roll down door to keep appliances out of sight.

I’d love to hear how you go about organizing kitchen appliances. Please leave me a comment.

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Photo credits: wheredidyoubuythat.com.