Organizing the Kitchen Drawers

This is the continuation in the series on Kitchen Organization:

We are ready for the bigger projects now – the kitchen counters, cabinets and this week, the kitchen drawers.

Although it may seem like a daunting project, you will want to mentally prepare yourself to tackle this important area of the home and assess what you have, what you no longer use or want and what might be relocated, if only used once or twice a year, but you really want to keep.

If you are doing this project over the course of a few days or weeks, I would organize the drawers and/or counters before the cabinets, as the cabinets are likely much more full of bulky items and you will need areas to put things on the counter, while the drawers are probably less numerous and have smaller items. Pull out each drawer and assess what you have and how organized each appears. Re-assign homes for items so that utensil placement makes sense. As you pull items out of the drawers, take the opportunity to clean and wipe it out. Get all the crumbs or dirt out. Do you have some drawer dividers for some of the items? These are easily purchased at the grocery or large retail stores, such as Wal-Mart or Target, but they make a huge difference in keeping things together and organized. If you have multiple spatulas, for instance, get rid of the half-melted and old ones. You really don’t need 8 of them!

You might use several smaller dividers for items like corn cob holders, can/bottle openers, snack clips, bottle stoppers, etc while longer items like skewers, knives, spatulas, rolling pins will rest to the side of them. If you have soup ladles, spaghetti spoons and the like you may need to store them up and down in alternating fashion to make better use of the space, but still readily accessible. Put cookie cutters in Ziploc bags or covered plastic containers where they might be stored elsewhere than in a drawer. Before you know it the drawers are done! Good job.

Next Week: Susan Deals with the Counter Tops & Cabinets