***Kitchen Organization Tips

An organized kitchen can reduce the stress of preparing an excellent meal. Whether you cook for a family of five or for yourself, there are benefits to establishing an efficient system for making your kitchen run smoothly. First, empty all of the cupboards, the pantries and even the refrigerator. This initial step helps make the process much easier.

Before you deal with your inventory, you may want to consider rearranging your kitchen furniture in order to maximize efficiency. This plan works well if you are building a kitchen or refurbishing your old one. Create a triangle between your refrigerator, sink and stove. Leave the passageways from one appliance to another open for ease of movement. Pacing across your kitchen with frequency to get from appliance to appliance becomes tiresome and time consuming and by organizing your appliances in this way can create a better more relaxed atmosphere in the kitchen. Once your kitchen furniture is set up properly, you should begin taking stock of your items.

Once you complete taking inventory of the foods that are available, begin to clean your refrigerator. After you complete the cleaning process, it is time to begin dealing with your refrigerated foods. You should organize your refrigerated foods by frequency of use and expiration date. With this method of organization, you can easily place your foods where they belong while making it less likely for your foods to expire. It should also be much easier to return an item to the back of the refrigerator without the risk of spilling or dropping a condiment jar.

When you have finished your work on the refrigerator, you should begin to categorize your remaining items. Begin by separating your spices, dishes, storage containers, pots, pans and all other items that you may have in your kitchen. Kitchen equipment should be split into categories based primarily on how they are used. From there, the organization is quite simple. Choose a logical location to store all items based on item type, frequency of use and your own limitations. Place your most used items at an easy to reach location. This makes finding what you need fast and stress-free. Lesser-used items can be placed in cupboards and other locations that are more difficult to reach.

Next, begin mapping out where each item is going to be placed and be sure not to mix cups with other dishes. Devote an entire shelf to the cups, an entire shelf to bowls and dishes and an entire shelf to other items of this variety. Make your system as simple as possible because complex systems can be difficult to maintain.

The same theory goes with spices. Try to split spices up in a specific order to avoid confusion. Devise a scheme for sorting your spice rack that can be easy to follow. A popular concept is to alphabetize the items, but many individuals may also sort by type. If you cook frequently, then organizing by variety should work well for you because it allows you to place similar spices in close proximity to each other. If you do not cook often, then alphabetizing your spices can make creating a meal much more manageable since you can find the spice you need quickly.

Perhaps you have done all of this and are still finding your kitchen to be cluttered and difficult to find what you need. It is about time that you invested in some kitchen storage devices. Buy drawer dividers to quickly and efficiently organize your silverware. Ladles, spatulas, serving spoons and other utensils can also be stored effectively with well-placed dividers. Adding stepped shelving can make accessing the back of your cabinets a breeze without sacrificing any space. If these measures are still not enough, then you should get storage containers. Try to find rectangular shaped containers as they take up less space. You should also search for containers that can be stacked.

These simple measures should allow you to easily organize your kitchen for efficient use. However, there may still be other factors in play to hamper your progress. Before you go all out in organizing your kitchen, you should take into account the dynamics of your kitchen use. How many people will be using the kitchen regularly? How many people are you expecting to serve daily? Do you often entertain large groups? Do you expect to dine in your kitchen or dining room? Eating in the kitchen can be easy as you do not need to transport food, but if you are going to eat in the kitchen, table and chair placement becomes an important issue. There are many factors to take into account when setting up your kitchen, but with proper planning and patience the task can be achieved with great success. If you are unable to locate a necessary item while beginning to cook a meal, you may want to consider these tips because they can really make a difference.