12 Tips For Home Organising The Kitchen; The Heart Of The Home

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The kitchen is one of the busiest rooms in the house. Here are some home organising tips to help you make it one of the most organised as well.

Buy double of your fresh produce, chop it up, blanch it, and freeze into small containers. It’s great to have these vegetables as a back-up when you’re running low on the fresh things.
Every house has a ‘dumping station’ – where the keys, wallets and phones tend to accumulate. For many people, this is somewhere on the kitchen bench. Try using the inside of one of your kitchen cupboards for this purpose. Screw a couple of small hooks in and hang the keys, and you can even fasten a small basket to the door, for those wallets and phones.
Make it as easy as possible for the family to recycle; invest in a dual garbage bin. Allocate one side for your rubbish and the other for your plastic bottles, glasses, etc. Use pictures if you need to so that your little people understand where their rubbish needs to go.
Baskets are a simple way of being organised and they can be purchased almost anywhere. Shoe boxes are a cost-effective alternative. For a neat and tidy pantry, place all of your breakfast cereals in one basket or box, your condiments, cans and cooking goods, etc. in the others and label them accordingly. This saves time, as you won’t need to rummage through your goods to find what you’re looking for. It also helps other family members to maintain order in the pantry.
For baking enthusiasts, having easy access to the ingredients is a must. Store your flours, sugars, spices, herbs, etc. in canisters and label them appropriately. You can place them in a prominent place in the kitchen or stow them in a drawer. If you decide to go with the drawer option, place your labels on the lid of each canister.
If you’ve got quite a stash of recipe books, consider downsizing or decluttering all together. Keep only your favourites; the recipes you cook only occasionally can easily be found online.
Have you got a junk drawer full of odds and ends? Now’s the time to go through it. Toss what you never use, and give the other items a home. If you’re having trouble parting with junk drawer treasures, one idea is to put all items into a box and if, after 3 months, you haven’t taken the item out to use it, chances are you never will. Release it!
Cleaning out the fridge – a job no one really likes. However, it has to be done or you can end up with some nasty little surprises. The next time you go to organise your fridge, try a different approach. Designate each shelf for specific items. For example, the bottom shelf can be for your beverages, the middle drawer for your leftover meals/open goods, and the top shelf can be kept for your cooking needs, like cream, butter, eggs, etc., and the condiments can live in the fridge door. Of course, the fresh produce stays in the crisper down the bottom.
Speaking of the freezer, make sure all of the food in here is labeled with the date that it was put in. A brief description of what is in each bag can also be a helpful when you’re trying to tell which bag of meat you’re pulling out… or when you need a little helper to pull something out for you.
Place any cookie cutters, icing tips, pastry bags and frosting combs in a clear plastic container and store them in a drawer. These small pieces of cooking equipment can be easy to lose, so keep them safe and in the same spot.
A first aid kit is something every home should have. If you don’t have one, now’s a good time to get it started. Simply purchase the necessary basics, such as band-aids, sterile strips, scissors, cotton buds, eye drops, alcohol swabs, bandages, paracetamol, tape and ointments from your local pharmacy and place all of the items into their own little pouch in a drawer (out of reach of curious toddlers). You’ll be grateful for this stash of medical supplies the next time there’s an accident in the house.
Mount a small basket on the wall inside the cupboard under your sink, to look after your sponges and brushes when they’re not being used. This keeps them off the bench and makes things much tidier. If the basket has holes, it will help with airflow and reduce the chance of mould developing.

There are many wonderful home organising and storage ideas out there. If you have other suggestions or there’s something you do at home that you’d like to share, let us know in the comments.

Eva Van Strijp is a mother of six and founder of Seedling Baby. When Eva isn’t hanging out with her family or running a business, she’s eating chocolate, listening to podcasts and creating resources for busy parents.