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Are you all lids and no containers? Are open cereal boxes and plastic cups taking over your cabinets and destroying your peace of mind? When it comes to decluttering your home and organizing your kitchen cabinets, it doesn’t have to be an overwhelming experience. It’s not your fault… it’s the kids. Here are my top kitchen cabinet storage hacks for taking back your kitchen.
How To Organize Your Kitchen Cabinets
Whether you keep all your snacks and supplies in a dedicated pantry space or in kitchen cabinets, I’m going to share some of my favorite tips for creating organization making it easier for you to function in your kitchen.
Get rid of the lids that no longer have a partner
With four kids with a penchant for taking snacks someplace other than the kitchen {ahem!}, our food storage containers need a major overhaul at least a couple times a year. Although we purchase containers with stackable containers and lids, there’s never, ever a complete inventory. Will the lids without matches suddenly find their mate? Likely not.
Take the time to go through your storage containers. These mismatched containers are just taking up space in your cabinets. Recycle the lids & reuse the container in your garage, for painting projects, or any other project that doesn’t require a set. Once you remove all the extras, you’ll see what you actually have. My favorite containers are the ones with lids that lock. They sure prevent A LOT of spills in lunch boxes!
Pair down on all the kid cups & water bottles
This is a difficult question to answer in my household since Mr. C likes collecting glasses on his work adventures. Our everyday drinkware, however, has gotten a little out of hand. Glassware, plastic cups, sports water bottles, Yeti mugs, coffee mugs… oh, the coffee mugs.
We have six people in our family so we do need several glasses, but it’s always good to take stock of what everyone actually uses and find ways to pair down. As our children have gotten older, they’re opting for adult cups and it’s been a great decluttering experience to say goodbye to all the plastic cups and sippy style bottles.
Having fewer cups will also help you stay on top of the dishes because instead of just grabbing another one from in the cabinet, you can keep ahead of the dirty dishes.
Check the expiration dates on your spices
You might just find that this is the easiest way to clear a lot of the clutter in your kitchen cabinets. Some people aren’t even aware that spices expire, but they do! This doesn’t mean that they’re unsafe to use per se but it does mean that there is a chance that the flavor of the spices will not be as strong.
After you’ve paired down on all the expired spices and the ones that you don’t use as often, it will also be much easier to find what you’re looking for when you’re preparing a meal.
Next, organize your spices in a way that makes sense to you. I’ve tried alphabetically, but I can never get my family on board with my ways. My spices are most often organized by the ones that I use most often and that’s okay, too.
Use open shelving or add glass to cabinet doors
I have four cabinets that need a lot of help. When you combine two households as we did, you end up with quite a few duplicates and there’s also a strong possibility that I am hiding some bachelor decor in my kitchen cabinets. Okay, a lot of bachelor decor.
One way that we are planning to declutter this space is by changing out our existing cabinet doors and adding seeded glass and lighting to this upper cabinet area. It will force us to keep it neat & tidy and provide a nice space to highlight Mr. C’s glass collection. After all, I have to let him keep some of his bachelor pad decor. (wink, wink)
Add labels to the shelves for your family to see
Labeling is a great way to get organized fast! If you have a label maker – use it! You’ll love seeing the difference that it can make in forcing helping everyone else in the family know where everything is supposed to go. Have these children never heard of zones?!
Having people help to put away the dishes is great, but not if they’re sticking everything in the wrong place all the time. This just causes more work for you – and more frustration, too! This also adds to the clutter. So use that label maker and everyone will be involved in helping keep the kitchen decluttered.
If you have a label maker, put it to good use! You don’t have to make the labels big, just something small and in the corner is just fine. Or you can even put the label on the inside of the cabinet door as well so that it’s viewable when someone opens it up.
In addition to our label maker, I also found super cute Rae Dunn pantry organization labels that I’m using on our glass pantry storage containers.
Set up the cabinets in a way that works best for how you work in the kitchen
If you’re the one cooking in the kitchen, create a space that is simple and easy for you to work with. You know the cabinets that you use the most and the ones that you never, ever use. Why put items in those cabinets when you’re never going to use that space?
Not only will this help you organize your space but it will also help you create a flow in the kitchen that will make you more efficient as well.
Use the cabinets that are eye level
Another big tip when you’re trying to make sense of the flow of your cabinets is that you need to use the ones that are at your eye level. This means that you’ll see them, and use them. And this also means that you can fill them with items that you’ll then need to pull out and use for the week as well.
As you can tell, these are just a few simple tips on ways that you can get your kitchen cabinets organized. Some may work for you, some may not but there are certain to be a few here on the list that can change things around for the positive!
If you’re ready to create a space in your kitchen that makes for an uncluttered look and a better cooking experience, these decluttering tips can help!
