How to End Kitchen Clutter Creatively
- 1). Throw out a life raft if the family is drowning in paper clutter. Sort your mail on the way from the mailbox to your door. If you can throw out what you don't want before it hits the house, that is best. Take in any papers that should be shredded and put them right by the shredder or through the shredder immediately. Open the rest, throwing out the outer envelopes immediately. Put the bills to be paid and mail to be answered in a file folder that you go through weekly or biweekly--depending on when you get paid. This should take the paper clutter out of the kitchen completely.
- 2). Go through one cabinet each day and get rid of everything in it that you don't use. If there are things in there that you only use on holidays or when you have a large group of people over, put these in a plastic bag tied tightly to keep out dust and then put them in the shed, basement, or garage. Mark them clearly with marker and keep them together. If you have too many of something and you don't want to get rid of them, bag these for when you may need them. Toss out or give away anything you don't really need.
- 3). Hang over the door shelves on the back of the kitchen door. Use a shelf to store small things that clutter up your cabinets like boxes of pudding or gelatin or small boxes of muffin mix. You can also use this for cleaning supplies and laundry items like dryer sheets, prewash, stain treatments and cleansers. Use it for items you feel are cluttering up your drawers or cabinets. You can also use hanging shoe caddies on the back of doors.
- 4). Use shoe boxes or small plastic bins in your cabinets to keep things sturdy. Packets of gravy mixes, powdered drink mixes, individual-sized instant grits and oatmeal, and cocoa or single-serving coffee packets store neatly and are easy to find when boxed. Keep cereal, crackers, grits, sugar and other staples in clear plastic ware with tight fitting lids that you can stack. Often the boxes are so much bigger than the product and you'll save a lot of space with containers that are the right size.
- 5). Get lots of extra space by using cup hooks for all of your cups and mugs. You can also use these in tall cabinets along the sides for hanging utensils like spatulas, slotted spoons and whatever else has a hole in the handle. Along the sides, they're out of the way yet handy. Install towel bars in the bottom cabinets and add some "S" hooks. You can hang pot holders, towels and even hang zippered plastic bags up to hold dry sponges, scouring pads and other small items neatly out of the way.
- 6). Use the space between the wall and the cabinets and fridge for flat items like cooling racks, cutting boards and cookies sheets. Use the broiler or drawer space under your oven to store all of your skillets and.or pot and pan lids. Anything flat will fit in here. Put only skillets you can stack and lift out easily if you use this a lot.
- 7). Lose the clutter in your spice cabinets by using a drawer to hold them. They lay down nicely and you can see each label clearly and since you've cleared your towels and pot holders out of them, you should have plenty of drawer space. You can use one drawer for the round spice jars and another for the tins if you have too many for one drawer.
- 8). Add extra shelving with plastic or wire shelves that fit inside your cabinets. This helps use up the dead space above the things you have in your cabinets in tall shelves. With these you can stack large plates and small plates on top of each other while keeping each of them accessible. Stack bowls and saucers, too.
- 9). Put on a great movie and straighten out things while you watch TV. Grab a kitchen drawer and sort its contents while you watch. Organize the items in them with drawer organizers which you can buy at any department store. Put one back and grab another when the movie comes on again.
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