The Kingdom of the Kitchen

There is a general order to the kitchen that is kind of an unwritten rule. The cups and dishes go into a cabinet near the dishwasher, or sink. This makes life easy when cleaning the dishes as they can easily be put right away.

The silverware is usually next to the stove, and then a utensil drawer near that. Pots and pans can be in a cabinet near the stove with big pots in the back and little ones stacked together if possible. Baking trays and pans need to be lined up and stacked neatly. 

Then you can start to organize your food. If possible, try to put all canned goods and jars together organized by size of container and/or alphabetized for easy finding. Put boxed goods together, organized by size so that you can easily grab the larger boxes without digging around or knocking over the smaller ones.

Keep going through each cluster of items by finding a neat place to store them where they will be both handy and out of the way. If it is not needed, don’t shove it in somewhere it doesn’t belong.  Toss it, sell it, or donate it instead. 

The trick to organizing and de-cluttering any room, and especially the kitchen, is to do one spot at a time. No matter how sidetracked you get, how many things you see on other shelves that need to be moved—work in the moment. You will likely accomplish more.