Our Top 5: How To De-Clutter Your Kitchen
Cookbooks here, pantry staples there, coffee-mugs and crockery everywhere? Tupperware cascading out of your cupboards when you open the doors? If you are tired about your messy kitchen and fancy a neat and clean look, we got you covered. Save your dollars on the Marie Kondo style so called experts. Here are Our Top 5: How To De-Clutter Your Kitchen.
Cookbooks
As with all organising the rule is: If you don’t use it, lose it. If you have a whole collection of cookbooks collecting dust, donate them. It contains your favourite Pavlova recipe for Christmas? Grand. Copy and store it in a binder of your top 30 recipes. Or simply take a picture and store it on your IPad. Do the same with all torn out pages from cooking magazines and recipe cards, and magically a messy pile vanished? You’re a dedicated chef and need those cookbooks? All of them. Then make the most of them. Add an open shelf dedicated to display your favourite cook books. For example get an Ikea Picture ledge. However make sure the colour matches your kitchen or stands out as a feature. If it does neither: Pop it in to our workshop at Dianella Polishing and we colour match it with your kitchen.
Pantry Staples
The pantry is overflowing, or worse you don’t have one? Firstly, toss everything that is out of date. Secondly, use what is there. De-clutter experts revealed that most pantry’s hold supplies that could feed a family of five for a month. Once you have gone through your entire food storage and disposed of all the expired, opened, not-so-nice-after-all stuff, you might already have plenty of space. Now simply organise it according to your needs. Make sure everything is easily accessible. Maybe just add a drawer or a shelf divider. Still lacking storage space? Add a pull-out pantry. Our cabinetmaker can tailor it to your kitchen. If you have the space, you may just want to add a floor to ceiling pantry next to your fridge. If there isn’t that big an empty corner, see if we can fit in a half height cupboard for you.
Crockery and Dishes
Remember the last holiday, when you stayed in this amazing beach unit? How many mugs and plates and glasses did it have? Chances are a set of four or eight. And surprisingly this was all you needed, wasn’t it?! Point is, we tend to over-stock. Yes you might entertain at home and not so often when you are on holidays. But honestly, we rarely need more than maximum twelve of a kind. If the party gets bigger, it is usually finger food or paper plates, party tableware or supplied by your caterer. This means: Your grand collection of crockery needs looking at: Check what you really need. Let go of all chipped and broken plates, mugs and glasses. Donate or dispose any extra mis-matched pieces. After a thorough stocktake most kitchens do have plenty of space for what is needed.
Tupperware or other food storage
Tupperware, old yoghurt tubs and ‘saved’ take-away containers cascading out of your cupboards? We all know two facts about Tupperware and co: 1) You never find the matching lid to your container 2) there is never enough space to store all the containers. So no surprise here, if we suggest to match up all containers and lids and throw out everything that doesn’t match up anymore.
As with all de-cluttering also decide which containers, although still a complete set, you haven’t used in a while. Maybe there is a good reason for it. Some Tupperware gets a bit sticky after a while. The really old, vintage ones even smell. Needless to say, if you want to get rid of the avalanche of plastic: Bin these as well. Finally decide if you are happy with their storage location. Often a drawer works better than a cupboard. Adding a drawer to an existing cupboard is an easy and affordable job. Lids are stored neatly in cd racks, which give the added bonus that you don’t need to lift them all out to get the right one. Store the containers in baskets or boxes so they stay put and don’t topple over.
Countertops & Kitchen Gadgets
Last but not least in Our Top 5: How To De-Clutter Your Kitchen is the kitchen counter. Toaster, blender, smoothie maker, cooking utensils and a bowl of miscellaneous bits and bobs are collecting dust and making it difficult to keep the space clean. No matter how hard you work on de-cluttering the rest of your kitchen, the cabinets and drawers. If your counter is cluttered-up, your whole kitchen looks messy. The good news is: It is an easy fix. 90 % of counter clutter was put there ‘temporarily’. The mail, the spare batteries, the birthday invite, and the lawn mowing-promotion. Paperwork belongs on your desk, or straight in the recycling bin.
Kitchen appliances, if you don’t use them on a daily basis, store them away. Most kitchens have half a meter space above the wall cabinets. Simply add another row on top of your existing cabinets and have all these small appliances close by but not collecting dust and using up space on your counter: Ice Cream machine, popcorn maker, smoothie maker … store them. Properly. Cooking utensils love a permanent home on hooks or in drawers and you know what to do with the bowl of miscellaneous bits and bobs? Right. Sort it. Lose it. Kitchen gadgets that aren’t used on a regular basis – donate them. They clutter up your space and mess with your mind. Once you cleared and cleaned the counter. You are done with Our Top 5: How To De-Clutter Your Kitchen. Sit down and be amazed. Enjoy your neat and clean and organised kitchen.
Need more inspiration for de-cluttering and fixing storage needs? Click here: https://www.dianellapolishing.com.au/blog/say-goodbye-to-your-kitchen-storage-problems/. Want to add storage, give us a call on 93032176 or click here to send an enquiry.
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