We all look to de-clutter at this time of the year, and one of our favourite rooms to clear up is the Kitchen. It is a common dumping ground for items, plus it can easily get messed up when you cook, or even just make a cup of tea. Simply stuffing items into a pot, or cramming stuff into a drawer isn’t the answer and can still make the space look cluttered.
Here are 4 common kitchen organising mistakes you should avoid.
1. Avoid leaving too much on the counter
While it is handy to have pots or utensils to hand, leaving them all out on the side will make the kitchen a mess. Even if you are using decorative pots to display everything – if these are stuffed full, they simply won’t look good.
Focus on what you use day-in-day-out. Is that your coffee machine, or mugs off a mug tree, or the salt and pepper mills. Whatever it is for you – these items can find a home on the worktop. Everything else should be tucked away in a drawer, under a counter cupboard or a rollaway storage trolley.
Use trays to zone items and create organisation. That could be a decorative chopping block where you keep your condiments, or a utensil pots that will only hold the most needed items.
2. Don’t have a catch-all junk drawer
It is easy to stuff bits and pieces into a kitchen drawer, but this will quickly become cluttered and could overflow onto surrounding surfaces. Make sure you have a structure to your drawers – use dividers so that you can compartmentalise bits and pieces. Giving everything a dedicated home is the key to an organisation system that will work.
3. Don’t group by item, group by need
Grouping kitchen equipment by item may give an aesthetically pleasing look, but it won’t be the most practical. Anything that makes your daily activities more complicated is a recipe for a clutter disaster!
So avoid placing similar looking items together, but create prep, cook and serve zones that maximise efficiency. Keep spatulas by the stove, mashers by the big bowls and coffee mugs near the coffee machine. If things are easy to find, they should be easy to put away again too.
4. Don’t hold onto the past
Each year sees a new gadget fad. This year you might have treated yourself to an air fryer, before that perhaps a Nutribullet, slow cooker or pasta machine? Maybe you still use them – but I bet there are items that you succumbed to that you no longer need? Time to re-evaluate!
Which gadgets or utensils do you use day in and day out? Keep them on display or in a handy drawer. Move items you use less frequently to a utility room, or up onto a high shelf out of the way. For anything you still want to keep – but only use on special occasions – consider moving it out to a storage unit. Everything else can be assessed and can either be donated, sold or disposed of in the correct way.
How is you kitchen looking? Let us know your top tips for excellent organisation – and which pitfalls you should avoid.
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