Organizing your kitchen

We all know how hard it is to keep a kitchen area organized.
It seems sometimes like things move about by themselves, and you can never find that recipe, spice, or utensil you know is there somewhere. These simple, easy to follow hints will give you the ideas you need to have a well-organized, harmonious kitchen. The first part of any organization task is to be absolutely ruthless! When going through and organizing each part of your kitchen, throw away those things you know you haven’t used and will not be using. Things that you are only keeping because they were a gift and you wouldn’t want that person to know you didn’t like it, things that haven’t been used since being purchased and other such items can all be tossed. I know it can be difficult, but ask yourself the following questions to help you figure out what to save and what to toss.

• Is it of current or frequent use to me?
• Do I find it beautiful or nice to look at?
• Does it serve a purpose in MY kitchen?

If you can honestly answer “yes” on any of those questions regarding a particular item, then keep it! If you can only answer no to all of the above, then it is time to do away with it. Another golden rule I wish to remind you of is “a place for everything, and everything in its place.”. It is always helpful to have a designated place to put every item in, and that’s where we will go from here.

Get Organized:
A way to organize pots, pans, cups, and large utensils such as spatulas is to place hanging hooks on your walls. You can buy the hook-shaped ones, and place them where you wish, or put up a piece of pegboard, and paint it an attractive color and use pegboard hooks, or you can simply use nails in the wall. I have seen many different attractive uses of this method, including displayed china collections, mugs, and cast iron cookware.

If your budget does not allow for that, use a medium sized box, or even better, a Rubbermaid storage container, to store your spices. To do this effectively, using small labels (the type you would use to price items at a yard sale), write the name of each spice on each label. Then place the labels on the tops of the lids of each respective spice jar. Next, place the labeled spices in alphabetical order in the box or storage container, and then you can place the container almost anywhere at all, and whenever you need an herb or spice, just pull out the container, and read from the tops of the lids without having to pull each one out.