Tag: kitchen cabinets organizers

11 Ideas For How To Organize Your Kitchen For Free

It’s great to know that even if you don’t have the budget for fancy kitchen organization ideas and products that you can still save money and organize your kitchen for free.

You probably already own plenty of items that can be used as organizers, you just need to be creative.

 

 

Old food containers make the perfect drawer or cabinet shelf organizers. Try using yoghurt pots to hold twist ties, rubberbands, toothpicks and the like. Or how about margarine tubs to keep packet mixes or tupperware lids together and stood upright. Glass jars from pasta sauces or mayonnaise can hold flatware or kitchen utensils.

Cereal boxes or other cardboard you have lying around can be cut up and used as drawer dividers.
Diy Drawer organizer

Via DesignSponge.com

Cardboard boxes covered in attractive craft paper make perfect baskets for your wall shelves or even inside your cabinets to keep like items together. Think of all those diaper, shoe, liquor and online shopping boxes you put in the recycling. Recycle them yourself into a pretty basket organizer.

Shoe boxes, especially the cheap and clear plastic variety, can easily be repurposed to keep like items together. Think pasta, granola bars, baking goods etc.

Baking trays can be used to group all of your baking goods whilst not in use. And how about turning a rarely used loaf tin upside down and using it as a tiered shelf at the back of your cabinet to store cans on. This saves space in your baking cabinet AND helps you to see the dark depths of the canned goods shelf.

Do you have an old dish drainer that you no longer use? Store your pot lids or baking sheets in it. They are much easier to find and grab if they are stood up vertically.

Beg, borrow or re-use some tension style curtain rods that will fit the height of your kitchen cabinets. Position them in pairs, front to back, at intervals that will hold your bakeware, chopping boards, trays and heavy platters. This will keep them upright and means you don’t have to lift the whole stack each time you need one at the bottom.

Curtain Tension Rod Dividers

Via MarthaStewart.com

Use a tray in your glassware or mug cabinet. Cover the top and bottom with a non-skid liner and then lay it on top of the bottom row of items to create a helper shelf for another row and make the maximum use of space.

If you have any pitchers, pretty mugs or pottery vases that you don’t use very often, put them on display and use them to hold your utensils.

If you don’t have much lying around your own house, visit thrift shops or yard sales and see what you can find. Look beyond the current state of any prospective items as with a bit of paint and a makeover, you’ll be amazed at how good, someone else’s ‘junk’ can look.

Just A Little Creativity transformed an old wooden spice rack into these handy organizers with a bit of paint.

Spice Rack Makeover

Alternatively you can try your hand at some easy DIY projects to come up with the perfect custom organizers for your kitchen clutter. Check out these 15 inspiring ideas for DIY kitchen organizers, which range from using a metal ruler to make a magnetic under cabinet spice rack to making your own tiered or helper shelves if you’re any good at wood work. 

Please leave me a comment and let me know if you have any other ideas for how to organize your kitchen for free.

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How To Organize Kitchen Cabinets In 4 Easy Steps

How To Organize Kitchen CabinetsKitchen cabinet organization is something you probably dream of when you’re wasting time trying to find things. This can not only be annoying but can also cause havoc if you’re at a crucial point in a recipe and have to turf out the whole cabinet to find something.

Having organized cabinets also means that you won’t waste money by letting food go past its use by date because you’ve forgotten about it or by buying duplicates of foods you already have.

So we now know WHY we want organized cabinets but what about the WHEN and the HOW?

When to organize your kitchen cabinets

Organizing kitchen cabinets is unlikely to be something that you are looking forward to doing at the weekend, so rather than put it off indefinitely, make a plan to GET GOING.

The next time you have a spare 10-15 minutes, perhaps when something is in the oven that doesn’t need your attention, get started with your kitchen organization ideas and work on one cabinet at a time.

You may need to empty two or three cabinets to start with, to give you room to re-organize, so keep the contents of the others in a cardboard box until you have another short spell to get to them.

 

 

How to organize kitchen cabinets

Follow these 4 easy steps when organizing your kitchen cabinets:

Step 1

EVALUATE what you’ve got in there and TOSS or donate everything that is either past its expiry date (food) or never used (think appliances, pots and pans, serving ware and utensils).

This is a hugely important step and can make or break how organized your kitchen ends up. You want to free up space for things you use everyday.

Infrequently used items should be stored elsewhere. Do this step properly and you’ll be surprised by how much kitchen cabinet storage space you really have.

Step 2

SORT what’s left and group like items together.

Step 3

Consider your kitchen zones of: food storage, food preparation, cooking, serving and cleaning and ensure that items relevant to each zone are stored in the zone. For example, canned goods would be in the food storage area, pots and pans would be in the cooking area and serving plates would be in the serving area.

Step 4

Once you know which cabinet is going to house which group of items, you can then decide where to STORE each item within the cabinet.

Generally heavier, bulky items will be stored in lower cabinets and lighter, smaller items will be stored in wall cabinets. So pots and pans will be stored down below in the cooking zone while oils and spices will be stored up top.

Organization within each cabinet will be determined by how often the item is used. As such you need to separate each group of items between those used on a daily basis, those used regularly but not every day and those used only occasionally.

Items used frequently will be stored on the bottom shelf of wall cabinets. Those rarely used should be placed on the top shelf and the rest will find a home on the middle shelf.

Kitchen cabinet organization products to help

Whilst you don’t really need anything but a little bit of common sense to order the contents of each shelf, there are a lot of kitchen cabinet organizers on the market to make your life a little bit easier and your cabinet a little more aesthetic.

These help to use your limited space more efficiently: for example, just adding an extra shelf doubles the amount you can store and using a tiered plate rack saves you having to lift the bowls to get to the plates.

They range from the plastic functional kind to the downright attractive depending on your taste and budget.

Options include stand alone shelves; slide out shelves and drawers for lower cabinets; under-cabinet shelf wire baskets, cup and paper towel holders; 2-tier shelves for pots and pans and lid racks; over-cabinet door organizers as well as Lazy Susans and cabinet liners.

Stand Alone Kitchen Cabinet Shelf Slide Out Kitchen Cabinet Shelf Under Cabinet Organizer

For some great products in the kitchen cabinet organizer range please click HERE.

Or click HERE for a DIY project where you can make your own pull out kitchen cabinet shelves.

Not enough cabinets?

If you are stuck with a kitchen that does not have enough cabinet space, then please remember three things:

  1. We use 20% of our kitchen items 80% of the time, so move those rarely used items out of the kitchen into another room where you have more storage space.
  2. Don’t forget about your under-cabinet space. There are a number of under mount appliances you can find including coffee makers, microwaves, toaster ovens and can openers. You can also mount a stemware rack, a paper towel holder or affix some hooks to hang decorative mugs and cups.
  3. Don’t forget about the dead space between the ceiling and the upper cabinets. This can be ideal for attractive appliances or serving dishes but if your seldom-used items are not that attractive, use pretty matching baskets to keep them in.

Hopefully you can now see how to organize your kitchen cabinets easily to save money and time. Try to curb your ‘all or nothing’ mentality and make a start on one cabinet or even one shelf in a cabinet today. Ready, get set, organize!

I’d love to hear any tips and tricks you use to keep kitchen cabinet clutter at bay. Please leave me a comment.

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Photo credit: Rubbermaid Products.