De-cluttering your kitchen
De-cluttering your kitchen
No matter how much space you have in your kitchen – or how well organised you are – being taken over by utensils, appliances, recipe books and other cooking essentials is something most of us have experienced at some point in our culinary careers. To help fight back against clutter in the kitchen, here are some top storage tips:
Draw a line under messy drawers
Without doubt, drawers are the first things we fill when we simply want to clear a surface. The result? Over-filled receptacles that can be difficult to close, or worse – impossible to open. Assign drawers to items based on their size so as to prevent smaller items being crowded out and hidden by larger objects. Be aware, too of the height of your drawer space and avoid squeezing items in if they don’t make an easy fit. They may be in there longer than you bargain for.
Sharp edges and awkward shapes
There’s nothing worse than delving into a drawer for a potato masher only to be cut by business end of a chopping knife. Wide utensil pots, which come in a variety of designs, provide an attractive, convenient and safe way to store frequently used utensils and keep them out of harm’s way.
Take the cut out of cutlery
Cutlery will probably be the most frequently used items that you store in your kitchen. It follows then, that a system that keeps your silverware easy to access will be worth its weight in gold. And it won’t cost the earth. Cutlery dividers, hanging racks and a range of other ingenious creations that compartmentalise knives, forks dessert spoons and teaspoons etc. are widely available for all tastes and budgets.
Small appliances
Bread makers, ice cream makers, espresso machines and slow cookers are just some of the small appliances now fighting for prime space with traditional kitchen favourites such as the toaster, sandwich maker and microwave. To prevent your work surfaces disappearing beneath a sea of gadgets you could, if space permits, install either a peninsula or island storage unit in your kitchen. If space is too tight, consider tall wall units that sit on the work surface and provide additional shelf space. Think about the weight of your appliances when allocating their new homes. Place heavier items as close as possible to work surface level and position any new storage units as close as you can to power sockets to minimise lifting and carrying.
Books etc.
Cookery books, recipe cards, shopping lists and other forms of paperwork around the kitchen can also proliferate and create unwelcome clutter. If you are able to set aside a small area of your kitchen for a bookcase, do so (it’ll also give you somewhere to keep the instruction manuals for all those appliances). You can save even more space by going electronic – try storing recipes on your computer and printing off only when necessary. Alternatively, if you have a smartphone, check out the wide range of recipe apps available for your handset – and never smudge a recipe sheet again!
The chances are that just going through the process of organising your kitchen will present lots of opportunities to throw out, or give away, items you no longer use or can put into more permanent storage. Then, once you have your system up and running, the most important thing is to stick with it to prevent the build-up of unmanageable clutter.
These kitchen storage tips have been provided by Big Yellow Self Storage. With Big Yellow you can store things of all shapes & sizes for as little as a week or as long you’d like.
