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.
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.
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.