Sometimes I have to think about topics to write about.  Other times, they jump out at me, literally.  Right now, kitchen organization comes to mind.  This past Saturday my family had one of those rare days when no one was scheduled to be anywhere all day.  I woke up early and had my first pot of coffee gone by 7:30.  When the kids starting rolling out of bed around 8:00, I was already in afternoon mode.


Since it was looking like it might be a lazy morning, I asked if anyone wanted anything special for breakfast and they settled on pancakes.  I knew that we had a griddle somewhere in the kitchen.  That is when the adventure began.  I immediately narrowed my search to the scary cabinet underneath the stove top.  Kitchen cabinet organization isn't exactly my strong suit either.  I knew it was bad, but we have conveniently managed to have our most used items toward the front, so it usually isn't SO bad finding what you need.

photo credit: Jim LinwoodThere was no griddle in the front, so that meant venturing into the darker corners of that little netherworld.  Kneeling in front of the stove, I began removing items one at a time as my quest for pancake making supplies began.  Piece by piece I started to pull out pots, pans and to my amazement, about forty pieces of old storage containers that somehow accumulated in the dark space.  I figured that I should match up any loose lids with their matching pieces as I went.  That is when my easy going weekend morning took a turn for the worse.  I was ten or fifteen pieces into the adventure before I found even one match!  In the end, I think we ended up with about ten "complete" containers and a huge pile of containers without matching lids.  Where did all of the lids go?  I can only guess that they are on a tropical beach somewhere sipping pina coladas with hoardes of un-matched socks that went AWOL from the drier.  To my credit, I didn't just throw all of the containers back in to the hole.  They are in a bag, sitting in the garage awaiting their orders.  In other words, I haven't quite made myself toss them yet.   All in all, it probably took me fifteen minutes just to clear the clutter and finally find the missing griddle.  Thank goodness I had at least guessed right about where to look.

I don't think that we are the only family with kitchen storage issues.  Even though our kitchen layout is pretty simple, we have managed, at times, to cover almost every flat surface with something or other.  There is probably someone out there who is a professional kitchen organizer, and they probably do pretty well for themselves.  I'm not ready to pay anyone yet, so my current mission is to slowly purchase and integrate some kitchen organizer tools in to our home.

When I run in to a situation like this one, I sometimes hit the point of not being able to take it anymore.  It is like a little twig snapping in my mind and I'm off on a mission.  I am probably guilty of starting more projects at one time than I reasonably should, but here are some of the things I'm doing to get our kitchen more organized:

1. Get rid of the clutter.  It was probably just a case of several different people (including myself) being unable to immediately find a matching lid that led to the mess under the stove over time.  When I started looking, I noticed that there were all kinds of small, seldom used items cluttering our kitchen space.  Step one was simply throwing away all of the tiny junk that was adding up to an enormous amount of clutter spread throughout the kitchen.
2. Kitchen drawer organization.  Another great example of entropy.  Total disorder here.  The good news is that just matching up things that actually fit in the proper drawer and using some nifty utensil holders and drawer dividers we found at Target solved this problem pretty easily.
3. Kitchen cabinet organization.  Well, this one is a bit more challenging, but is definitely part of the bigger picture of taking care of overall kitchen organization.  Depending on how deep your kitchen cabinets are, this can get a little bit scary.  Our cupboards are pretty darn deep.  I can stick my entire arm in and just barely reach the back of the corner one.  There were more than a few out of date items hiding back there just taking up space.  I also found that somehow, over time we had stockpiled enough cans of baking powder to last several generations.  I guess that happened because we weren't sure if we had enough or not and just picked up a new can (over and over again) while we were at the store.  This had to be cleared up.  My list of items to purchase now includes a lazy Susan for the super deep cabinet that I am committed to using.  I have to keep repeating my mantra, "I will not shove to the back.  I will not shove to the back."
4. Pantry Organization.  Here again we have a situation that is very similar to the cabinets.  We actually have an old china closet in our downstairs laundry room that acts as a pantry.  I don't remember how we ended up with that, but it works and it is out of sight, so I can deal with it.  This is where we try to keep our bulkier and seldom used items now instead of the cabinets.  We just have to keep up on it when we bring home new stuff from the store.  Taking five extra minutes to keep things organized from the beginning can save a ton of time later.  People with a more formal "pantry" may want to take advantage of specialized kitchen storage devices and pantry shelving to help keep things more separated and organized.  We are still making due with the old china closet for the time being because of space considerations.

In general, you want to use some common sense when you are organizing your kitchen.  Keep the things that you use every day like glasses and dishes where you can get to them without having to resort to climbing.  Put bulky items that you don't use very much like crock pots, blenders, dehydrators, and the like somewhere out of the way and not taking up valuable counter top space. 
Take a few extra seconds to put things in the right place as you go along, and kitchen organization won't have to be a major deal anymore.  At least that's what I'm going for now.

photo credit: NancyHugoCKD.com